- "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man."
(Jesus in Matthew 15:19-20)
- "Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
(Stephen King)
- "In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are."
(Robert Louis Stevenson in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
- "The heart is but a small vessel; and yet dragons and lions are there, and there likewise are poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms. There also is God, there are the angels, there life and the Kingdom, there light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace: all things are there."
(St. Makarios the Great in Homilies 43:7)
- "Within the heart is an unfathomable depth. There are reception rooms and bedchambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages. In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. In it is death, in it is life.... The heart is Christ's palace... There Christ the King comes to take His rest, with the angels and the spirits of the saints, and He dwells there, walking within it and placing His kingdom there."
(St. Makarios the Great in Homilies 15:32-33)
- "I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?"
(Aleister Crowley in Aceldama : A Place To Bury Strangers In)