“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 of mine was navigating one of those impossible situations where every available choice felt like a loss. She had to pick between two jobs, two cities, two versions of her future — neither of them clean, neither of them safe. I texted her something practical and forgettable. Her sister, meanwhile, sent her four words scrawled 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 the paralysis in a way that no serious advice had managed. Later, when she tracked down the source, she discovered it had been doing exactly that job — puncturing overthought decisions with a wink — for well over a century. That discovery sent me down a research rabbit hole I never quite climbed out of.
This quote belongs to a tradition of deliberate wit — the art of taking a solemn moral proverb and detonating it from the inside. To understand why it still lands, you first need to understand what it is subverting.
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The Ancient Proverb This Quote Is Mocking
For centuries, Western moral philosophy leaned on a simple decision-making rule. The idea was straightforward: 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, engraved it in almanacs, and 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 who 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 under the cheerfully deflating title “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 to produce 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. 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, replaced by pure aesthetic preference.
This wasn’t accidental irreverence. Burgess, Wells, and Porter were card-carrying members of the American bohemian literary scene. They wrote with a kind of gleeful sophistication, mocking Victorian earnestness while still being deeply literary. The joke worked because it required the reader to know the original proverb — and then to enjoy watching it get dismantled.
Reprinting and Early Spread
Also in 1896, The Pacific Unitarian reprinted the “Inexpensive Cynicisms” collection, crediting The Lark as the source. This early reprinting matters. It shows the saying jumped from a bohemian literary publication into a more mainstream religious and cultural journal within the same year. That kind of cross-pollination accelerated the quote’s reach considerably.
Small magazines in the 1890s functioned as the social media of their era. They circulated among educated readers, got clipped and passed around, and fed the appetites of a growing middle class hungry for witty, modern writing. A saying that appeared in one could travel across the country within months.
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Carolyn Wells Steps Into the Spotlight
By 1899, the saying had shed its devilish variant and settled into its more familiar form. The Literary Era, a Philadelphia-based monthly, published a set of “Modern Aphorisms” attributed 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 had been publishing 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 across several publications.
Additionally, the shift from “Devils” to “evils” in this version 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, a book of comic maxims and witticisms. She included “Of two evils, choose the prettier” in a section titled “Maxioms” — a portmanteau of “maxims” and “axioms” that 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. When later compilers credited the quote, they pointed back to Wells. When researchers traced the lineage, they arrived at Folly for the Wise.
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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 — a writer who moved effortlessly between mystery novels, children’s books, humorous verse, and anthologies of comic writing.
Wells was also deaf from childhood, having lost most of her hearing after a bout of scarlet fever. Rather than allowing that to limit her social or literary world, she built a career defined by sharp observation and verbal precision. Her humor was always cerebral — the kind that rewards readers who catch the reference.
She compiled and edited numerous anthologies, including collections of nonsense verse and parody. Her sensibility was deeply literary, and she understood that the best comic writing operates by exploiting the gap between expectation and delivery. “Of two evils, choose the prettier” is a perfect example of that technique in miniature.
Furthermore, Wells was well-connected in the American literary world of her era. She corresponded with major figures, contributed to prestigious publications, and 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, reprinted it, and passed it forward.
In 1955, Herbert V. Prochnow included it in his Speaker’s Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms, attributing it cleanly to Carolyn Wells. Prochnow filed it under the topic of “Beauty” — a categorization that reveals something interesting about how mid-century readers interpreted the quote. They read it less as moral philosophy and more as a comment on human nature’s tendency to let aesthetics override ethics.
Then, in 1971, the quote appeared in the humorously titled Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations, compiled by Leonard Louis Levinson. 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 on aesthetics.
These two different filing decisions — Beauty versus Evil — tell us something important. The quote is genuinely ambiguous. It can function as a wry observation about human shallowness, a feminist critique of how “prettiness” gets weaponized, or a comic deflation of moral seriousness. Its richness comes precisely from that ambiguity.
A Misattribution Enters the Picture
In 1990, quotation compiler Robert Byrne included a variant in his collection 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 — a critique of how men make decisions, dressed up as a wry axiom. The attribution to “Unknown” suggests Byrne encountered this variant in circulation without a clear source, which means the quote had already begun drifting from its origins.
This kind of drift is extremely common with witty sayings. A quote gets paraphrased, slightly altered, stripped of its attribution, and then re-attributed to whoever seems most likely to have said something clever. Wells’s line, unfortunately, suffered exactly this fate in some corners of the internet.
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The Academic Treatment: Anti-Proverbs
By 1999, scholars had begun taking this category of subversive sayings seriously as a literary form. Wolfgang Mieder and Anna Tóthné Litovkina published Twisted Wisdom: Modern Anti-Proverbs, a rigorous academic study of how contemporary culture rewrites traditional proverbs.
They included Wells’s saying alongside a cluster of related variants, demonstrating 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 deeply unsatisfying — either 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 simply replaces one criterion (lesser) with another (prettier) and lets the absurdity do the work.
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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” — prettier lands with a specific, slightly arch, slightly feminine quality that perfectly suits Wells’s voice.
Additionally, “prettier” implies a judgment that is entirely subjective, entirely aesthetic, and 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, even if it arrives dressed as a joke.
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, charm, and surface appeal guide their choices — and then it winks at you for noticing.
Wells captured this truth in 1896 and compressed it into six words.
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Modern Usage and Cultural Resonance
Today, the quote circulates widely on social media, often without attribution. Source Pinterest boards file it under “humor” or “life advice” with equal frequency. It appears on coffee mugs, in Instagram captions, and in the kind of group chats where someone needs to justify a questionable but aesthetically pleasing decision.
The quote works especially well in the modern era because 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 — not a policy prescription, but a reminder that humans are not purely rational actors and never have been.
Moreover, the quote has found a particular resonance in conversations about relationships, careers, and lifestyle choices. When someone faces two imperfect options, “choose the prettier” functions as permission to let joy, beauty, and pleasure 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. Source Carolyn Wells authored the version of this quote that entered lasting circulation — first in The Lark in 1896 (possibly collaboratively with Bruce Porter and Gelett Burgess), then solo in The Literary Era in 1899, and definitively in her own book Folly for the Wise in 1904.
The 1896 “Devils” variant may have emerged from the collaborative energy of the Lark group. However, the cleaner “evils” version — the one that traveled through the 20th century and into the 21st — belongs to Wells.
She deserves the credit, and she deserves the recognition that comes with it. Wells was a sharp, prolific, underappreciated comic writer who 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, and then it makes you think.
“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, that beauty is a legitimate value, and that 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, and then we find reasons afterward. She just had the wit to say so in six words.