Goodness

"Goodness does exist! Not just evil, stupidity and Satan. Evil has more energy, and can act with the speed of lightning, like a blitzkrieg, whereas goodness likes to dawdle in the most peculiar fashion. This fatal disproportion leads to irreparable losses in many cases."

"But goodness returns, calm, unhurried, like those phlegmatic, elegantly dressed, pipe-smoking gentlemen detectives in old-fashioned mysteries, who appear upon the scene of the crime the day after it's been committed. It comes back slowly, as if it alone had no access to modern modes of transportation, no train, car, plane, rocket or even bicycle at its disposal. It returns, though, deliberately as a pilgrim, inevitably as the dawn. Unfortunately, it comes back too slowly, as if it doesn't want to recall that we are tragically caught up in time, we have so little time. Goodness treats us as though we were immortal; it is itself immortal in a certain light, dry way, and it apparently ascribes the same quality to us, dismissing time and the body, our aging, our extinction. Goodness is better than we are."

- Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty

(Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh)