The comparison that comes immediately to my mind when I consider the story of Amalickiah as it’s told in Alma 47 is Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard III.
“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
LADY ANNE:
Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor man:
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER:
But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”
“I’ll not meddle with it. It makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbor’s wife but it detects him. ‘Tis a blushing, shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.”
“And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days, —
I am determined to prove a villain.”
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