"... there is always good ..."

A small knowledge of history depresses one with the sense of the everlasting mass and weight of human iniquity: old, old, dreary, endless, repetitive unchanging incurable wickedness. All towns, all villages, all habitations of men - sinks! And at the same time one knows that there is always good: much more hidden, much less clearly discerned, seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or deed or face - not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the visible advertised wickedness, is really there.

 - J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son