Fortunately, as human history has shown, it is not unusual for good to come of evil, less is said about the evil that can come out of good, such are the contradictions of this world of ours, some warrant more consideration than others . . .

— from the novel Blindness by José Saramago, translated from Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

(*This passage is punctuated by ellipsis because Saramago’s style often connects complete sentences by commas, as can be seen here, yet what follows this section carries forward another set of ideas.)