A life spent choosing evil wastes even a man of magnificent capacity

Evidence

His magnificent head shows so plainly the better possibilities which might have been his. His life, in spite of a certain dazzle which belongs to it, is a ruined and wasted one, and one asks what of good can the future have in store for one who has for so long chosen evil? — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 145

Categorization

• APHORISMS: Reads as earned moral observation about ruined promise and the long arc of chosen wrong.
• XREF: connects to: A prominent moral crusader excused later immorality he once decried — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 657; Evil can consist of depraved excess where pleasure gained wildly underweighs pain inflicted — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3870; A man who has no object to negate has no real future (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• A prominent moral crusader excused later immorality he once decried #complicates (1.00) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 657
• Evil can consist of depraved excess where pleasure gained wildly underweighs pain inflicted #complicates (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3870
• A man who has no object to negate has no real future #complicates (1.00)
• A fully predictable, reified self gives up any reason for living #complicates (1.00) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 473
• Man’s habit-forming power exemplifies spirit’s incarnation in time. #complicates (1.00)
• A man’s fixated desire runs on the threat that renouncing it would kill him #complicates (1.00) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 119