“Of two evils, choose the prettier.”
— Carolyn Wells, Folly for the Wise (1904)
Some quotes arrive at exactly the wrong moment — which is, of course, exactly the right one. A few years ago, a close friend navigated an impossible situation. Every available choice felt like a loss. She had to pick between two jobs, two cities, two versions of her future. Neither option was clean or safe. I texted her something practical and forgettable. Her sister sent her four words on a Post-it photo: “Choose the prettier one.” My friend laughed for the first time in days.
She had no idea it was a quote. She thought her sister made it up. That small, absurd, slightly irreverent line cut through her paralysis. No serious advice had managed that. Later, when she tracked down the source, she discovered the quote origin two evils choose prettier had been doing exactly that job for well over a century. It punctured overthought decisions with a wink. That discovery sent me down a research rabbit hole I never quite climbed out of.
This quote belongs to a tradition of deliberate wit. It takes a solemn moral proverb and detonates it from the inside. To understand why it still lands, you first need to understand what it subverts.
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The Ancient Proverb This Quote Is Mocking
For centuries, Western moral philosophy leaned on a simple decision-making rule. When all options are bad, pick the least damaging one. Minimize harm. Accept the smaller wound.
This principle became so embedded in popular culture that it hardened into a proverb. People quoted it seriously. They engraved it in almanacs. They used it to justify difficult compromises. It carried the weight of resigned wisdom — the kind of advice that tastes like medicine.
Then along came a group of San Francisco writers in the 1890s. They decided that solemn wisdom deserved a good roasting.
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The Lark Magazine and the Birth of “Inexpensive Cynicisms”
In 1896, a small but wildly influential literary magazine called The Lark published a collection of sayings. The title was cheerfully deflating: “Inexpensive Cynicisms.” Three writers shared credit for the piece: Carolyn Wells, Bruce Porter, and Gelett Burgess himself.
The collection was a masterclass in comic subversion. Each saying took a familiar proverb and twisted it just far enough. The result was a laugh — or a wince. Among them appeared this gem:
“Of two Devils choose the Prettier.”
Notice the capital D. Notice “Devils” instead of “evils.” The swap was deliberate and delicious. The quote origin two evils choose prettier story begins here, though the text used “Devils” at this stage. Choosing between two devils implies you’re not minimizing harm at all. You’re just picking the more attractive damnation. The moral framework collapses entirely. Pure aesthetic preference replaces it.
This wasn’t accidental irreverence. Burgess, Wells, and Porter were card-carrying members of the American bohemian literary scene. They wrote with gleeful sophistication. They mocked Victorian earnestness while remaining deeply literary. The joke worked because readers knew the original proverb. They enjoyed watching it get dismantled.
Reprinting and Early Spread
Also in 1896, The Pacific Unitarian reprinted the “Inexpensive Cynicisms” collection. They credited The Lark as the source. This early reprinting matters significantly. The saying jumped from a bohemian literary publication into mainstream media. It moved into a religious and cultural journal within the same year. That cross-pollination accelerated the quote’s reach considerably.
The Quote Origin Two Evils Choose Prettier
Small magazines in the 1890s functioned as the social media of their era. They circulated among educated readers. They got clipped and passed around. They fed appetites of a growing middle class hungry for witty, modern writing. A saying that appeared in one publication could travel across the country within months. Understanding the quote origin two evils choose prettier requires recognizing this distribution system.
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Carolyn Wells Steps Into the Spotlight
By 1899, the saying had shed its devilish variant. It settled into its more familiar form. The Literary Era, a Philadelphia-based monthly, published a set of “Modern Aphorisms.” The publication attributed them specifically to Carolyn Wells. The collection included this version:
“Of two evils choose the prettier.”
The attribution read: Carolyn Wells in the “Criterion.” This tells us something important. Wells published these witticisms in multiple venues simultaneously. She wasn’t just a contributor to The Lark. She was actively building a reputation as a writer of sharp, comic aphorisms. Understanding the quote origin two evils choose prettier means recognizing Wells’s role in shaping this saying’s final form.
Additionally, the shift from “Devils” to “evils” is worth noting. The change made the quote more universally applicable. “Devils” carried a specific, almost theological flavor. “Evils,” however, could mean anything. Bad jobs, bad relationships, bad haircuts. The broader word made the joke land harder in everyday situations.
Wells Publishes It in Her Own Book
In 1904, Carolyn Wells published Folly for the Wise. It was a book of comic maxims and witticisms. She included “Of two evils, choose the prettier” in a section titled “Maxioms.” This was a portmanteau of “maxims” and “axioms.” It perfectly captured her approach to received wisdom. The book placed the quote firmly in her authorial hands.
This 1904 publication became the anchor point for all subsequent attributions. Later compilers credited the quote by pointing back to Wells. Researchers traced the lineage and arrived at Folly for the Wise. The quote origin two evils choose prettier is definitively established through this publication.
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Who Was Carolyn Wells, Exactly?
Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) deserves far more recognition than she typically receives. She was extraordinarily prolific. She moved effortlessly between mystery novels, children’s books, humorous verse, and comic writing anthologies.
Wells was also deaf from childhood. She lost most of her hearing after a bout of scarlet fever. Rather than allowing that to limit her world, she built a career defined by sharp observation and verbal precision. Her humor was always cerebral. It rewards readers who catch the reference.
She compiled and edited numerous anthologies. These included collections of nonsense verse and parody. Her sensibility was deeply literary. She understood that the best comic writing exploits the gap between expectation and delivery. “Of two evils, choose the prettier” is a perfect example of that technique. The quote origin two evils choose prettier reveals Wells’s mastery of compression and wit.
Furthermore, Wells was well-connected in the American literary world of her era. She corresponded with major figures. She contributed to prestigious publications. She earned genuine respect as a humorist at a time when female writers in that genre were rare and often dismissed.
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The Quote’s Life in Anthologies
After 1904, the saying took on a life of its own. Compilers discovered it. They reprinted it and passed it forward.
What Does This Quote Really Mean
In 1955, Herbert V. Prochnow included it in his Speaker’s Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms. He attributed it cleanly to Carolyn Wells. Prochnow filed it under the topic of “Beauty.” This categorization reveals something interesting about mid-century readers. They read it less as moral philosophy and more as a comment on human nature. They saw it as a tendency to let aesthetics override ethics. The quote origin two evils choose prettier connects directly to this interpretation.
Then, in 1971, the quote appeared in Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations. Leonard Louis Levinson compiled it. The title itself was a joke — a deliberate riff on the famous Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Filing Wells’s line under “Evil” rather than “Beauty” shifted the interpretive frame again. Now the quote read as commentary on moral compromise rather than aesthetics.
These two filing decisions — Beauty versus Evil — tell us something important. The quote is genuinely ambiguous. It can function as a wry observation about human shallowness. It can work as a feminist critique of how “prettiness” gets weaponized. It can mock moral seriousness. Its richness comes precisely from that ambiguity. Exploring the quote origin two evils choose prettier reveals this multivalence.
A Misattribution Enters the Picture
In 1990, quotation compiler Robert Byrne included a variant in his collection. The title was The Fourth and By Far the Most Recent 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said. His version read:
“When confronted with two evils, a man will always choose the prettier.”
Byrne attributed this to “Unknown.” The addition of “a man will always” transforms the quote significantly. Suddenly it becomes a pointed observation about male behavior specifically. It critiques how men make decisions, dressed up as a wry axiom. The attribution to “Unknown” suggests Byrne encountered this variant without a clear source. The quote had already begun drifting from its origins. The quote origin two evils choose prettier had become obscured.
This kind of drift is extremely common with witty sayings. A quote gets paraphrased and slightly altered. It gets stripped of its attribution. It gets re-attributed to whoever seems most likely to have said something clever. Wells’s line suffered exactly this fate in some corners of the internet.
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The Academic Treatment: Anti-Proverbs
By 1999, scholars began taking this category of subversive sayings seriously. Wolfgang Mieder and Anna Tóthné Litovkina published Twisted Wisdom: Modern Anti-Proverbs. It was a rigorous academic study of how contemporary culture rewrites traditional proverbs.
They included Wells’s saying alongside a cluster of related variants. They demonstrated that it had become a recognized template for proverb parody. The original “choose the lesser” proverb had spawned an entire ecosystem of rewrites, including:
– “Of two evils, choose the one you haven’t tried before.” – “Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.” – “A press agent never chooses the lesser of two evils, but the one most likely to be talked about.”
Each variant attacks the original from a different angle. Together, they suggest that modern readers find the “lesser evil” framework unsatisfying. It’s too resigned, too binary, or too detached from how humans actually make decisions. Wells’s version, however, remains the most enduring. It doesn’t argue with the original proverb. Instead, it replaces one criterion (lesser) with another (prettier). The absurdity does the work. Understanding the quote origin two evils choose prettier means recognizing this elegant simplicity.
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Why “Prettier” Is the Perfect Word
The word “prettier” carries enormous freight in this small sentence. Consider the alternatives. “More attractive” sounds clinical. “More appealing” sounds like marketing copy. “Nicer” sounds timid. But “prettier” lands with a specific, slightly arch quality. It carries a slightly feminine flavor. It perfectly suits Wells’s voice.
How Quote Origin Two Evils Shaped Culture
Additionally, “prettier” implies a judgment that is entirely subjective. It’s entirely aesthetic. It’s entirely disconnected from moral calculus. The original proverb asks you to measure harm. Wells’s version asks you to notice beauty. That substitution is philosophically radical. It arrives dressed as a joke, which makes it work even better.
Furthermore, the word carries a gentle self-awareness. Choosing the “prettier” evil doesn’t pretend to be virtuous. It doesn’t dress up self-interest as wisdom. It simply admits that humans often let beauty guide their choices. Then it winks at you for noticing. The quote origin two evils choose prettier captures this truth perfectly in six words.
Wells captured this truth in 1896 and compressed it beautifully.
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Modern Usage and Cultural Resonance
Today, the quote circulates widely on social media. Often it appears without attribution. Pinterest boards file it under “humor” or “life advice” with equal frequency. It appears on coffee mugs. It shows up in Instagram captions. It fills group chats where someone needs to justify a questionable but aesthetically pleasing decision.
The quote works especially well in the modern era. The “lesser of two evils” framework has become a fixture of political discourse. Every election cycle, commentators invoke it seriously. Wells’s version arrives as a counterpoint. It’s not a policy prescription. It’s a reminder that humans are not purely rational actors. They never have been. The quote origin two evils choose prettier offers wisdom wrapped in humor.
Moreover, the quote has found particular resonance in conversations about relationships, careers, and lifestyle choices. When someone faces two imperfect options, “choose the prettier” functions as permission. It allows joy, beauty, and pleasure to factor into the decision. That’s a genuinely useful reframe, dressed up as a joke.
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Giving Credit Where It’s Due
The evidence points clearly in one direction. Carolyn Wells authored the version that entered lasting circulation. First it appeared in The Lark in 1896. It possibly emerged collaboratively with Bruce Porter and Gelett Burgess. Then it appeared solo in The Literary Era in 1899. Finally, it appeared definitively in her own book Folly for the Wise in 1904. The quote origin two evils choose prettier is rooted firmly in Wells’s authorship.
The 1896 “Devils” variant may have emerged from collaborative energy. The Lark group may have created it together. However, the cleaner “evils” version belongs to Wells. This is the version that traveled through the 20th century. It continues into the 21st century today.
She deserves the credit. She deserves the recognition that comes with it. Wells was a sharp, prolific, underappreciated comic writer. She understood that the best jokes illuminate something true. This one illuminates something very true indeed.
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Conclusion: A Six-Word Philosophy
Some quotes endure because they comfort. Others endure because they challenge. Wells’s line endures because it does something rarer. It makes you laugh at yourself in the middle of a hard decision. Then it makes you think. The quote origin two evils choose prettier reveals why this saying has lasted over a century.
“Of two evils, choose the prettier” isn’t nihilism. It isn’t shallow vanity. It’s a wry acknowledgment that moral frameworks are human constructions. Beauty is a legitimate value. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit you’re choosing with your heart rather than your calculator.
My friend took the job in the city she found more beautiful. Things worked out better than she expected. Carolyn Wells, writing in San Francisco in 1896, would probably not have been surprised. She understood something about human nature that philosophers often miss. We choose what moves us. Then we find reasons afterward. She just had the wit to say so in six words.