"Those who plot the destruction of others often perish in the attempt"
About this Quote
Revenge is pitched here as a self-consuming engine: the person who sets out to ruin others usually engineers their own collapse. Moore, an Irish Romantic poet writing in an age of revolutions and imperial crackdowns, understands destruction less as a single violent act than as a habit of mind. "Plot" is the key word. It suggests calculation, secrecy, and duration: malice as a long game that requires vigilance, paranoia, and a narrowing of the self. The line lands because it treats that inner corrosion as the real punishment, with external "perish[ing]" only the visible endpoint.
The subtext is moral, but not naive. Moore isn't promising a tidy universe where villains reliably get what they deserve; he's warning that the attempt itself is inherently destabilizing. To "plot" against someone is to invite counterplots, to misjudge contingencies, to underestimate how quickly violence ricochets through social networks. In political terms, it reads like a compact theory of backlash: coercion breeds resistance; scapegoating creates enemies; the machinery built to crush others ends up turning on its operator.
As a poet, Moore compresses what could be sermon into something closer to a proverb, sharp enough to be repeated and flexible enough to apply everywhere from palace intrigue to personal feuds. The rhetorical trick is that it flatters the listener's sense of justice while smuggling in a practical insight: cruelty is inefficient. Even if you "win", you've already paid in obsession, fear, and isolation. The attempt exacts its toll long before the outcome is known.
The subtext is moral, but not naive. Moore isn't promising a tidy universe where villains reliably get what they deserve; he's warning that the attempt itself is inherently destabilizing. To "plot" against someone is to invite counterplots, to misjudge contingencies, to underestimate how quickly violence ricochets through social networks. In political terms, it reads like a compact theory of backlash: coercion breeds resistance; scapegoating creates enemies; the machinery built to crush others ends up turning on its operator.
As a poet, Moore compresses what could be sermon into something closer to a proverb, sharp enough to be repeated and flexible enough to apply everywhere from palace intrigue to personal feuds. The rhetorical trick is that it flatters the listener's sense of justice while smuggling in a practical insight: cruelty is inefficient. Even if you "win", you've already paid in obsession, fear, and isolation. The attempt exacts its toll long before the outcome is known.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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