Life & Mortality Quote by Helen Keller

Keller’s line skewers a particularly American temptation: turning moral life into an endless cage match with “the devil,” then calling the exhaustion virtue. The barb is in the word “wonderful,” a sly, near-satirical compliment that exposes how righteousness can become its own form of self-congratulation. “Good people” aren’t indicted for malice; they’re indicted for misplaced focus. Keller understands that crusading feels productive because it provides an enemy, a scoreboard, and the flattering sense of being on the right side.

The subtext is psychological and political. When you define ethics primarily as opposition to evil, you’re incentivized to keep evil theatrically present. You end up feeding what you claim to starve. Keller flips the economy of attention: evil doesn’t need to be defeated by constant combat; it can be deprived. Making the devil “die…of ennui” is the stroke of wit that gives the argument teeth. Evil, she suggests, thrives on obsession, spectacle, and the oxygen of our fixation. Ignore it by building something better, and it withers from boredom.

Context matters: Keller lived through the height of American moral panics and reform movements, alongside industrial exploitation, war, and the policing of “sin” as social policy. As a public intellectual and activist, she’s pushing against punitive moralism and toward a practical ethic of care. “Loving their fellow men” isn’t soft; it’s a redirect from performance to solidarity, from battling symbols to repairing lives.