Mohammed Elakkari

“There is really only one question you ever need to direct at someone to work out whether or not they are a good person, and that is, with deliberate simplicity: Do you think you are a good person? And to this there is only one acceptable answer. People who are genuinely good, people who know about kindness, patience, forgiveness, compromise, apology and gentleness always, always answer: no.

One cannot both be a good person and at the same time feel totally blameless and pure inside. Goodness is, one might say, the unique consequence of a keen awareness of one’s capacity to be bad: that is, to be thoughtless, cruel and self-righteous. The price of being genuinely good has to be a constant suspicion that one might be a monster – combined with a fundamental hesitation about labelling anyone else monstrous.

Only properly bad people don’t lie awake at night worrying about their characters. It has generally never occurred to the most difficult or dangerous people on the planet that they might be awful. It is a grim paradox that the worst deeds that humans have ever been guilty of have been carried out by people with an easy conscience, people who felt they were definitely on the side of angels.

The melancholy have advanced knowledge of their impurity, and are experts in their own sinfulness. They can’t forget how silly they have been at many moments and with what lack of thought they have treated others. This self-knowledge isn’t fun, but it keeps them very honest.”
― The School of Life, Varieties of Melancholy: A Hopeful Guide to Our Sombre Moods