Quotes by Philosophers - Page 87

Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
Thomas More
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see
G.K. Chesterton
When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue.When you are above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, like a lover's will: there is the origin of your virtue.When you despise the agreeable and the soft bed and cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is the origin of your virtue.When you will with a single will and you call this cessation of all need "necessity": there is the origin of your virtue.Verily, a new good and evil is she. Verily, a new deep murmur and the voice of a new well!Power is she, this new virtue; a dominant thought is she, and around her a wise soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend. If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn’t have friends.
Montesquieu
It is not our religion, still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue; virtue must be practised. Therefore, let no one do to others what he would not have done to himself.
Yagnavalkya
Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, "This thing called the Way - where does it exist?"Zhuangzi said, "There's no place it doesn't exist.""Come," said Master Dongguo, "you must be more specific!""It is in the ant.""As low a thing as that?""It is in the panic grass.""But that's lower still!""It is in the tiles and shards.""How can it be so low?""It is in the piss and shit!
Zhuangzi
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running.
Ayn Rand
...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?
Marquis de Sade
Never sacrifice what’s right for what’s convenient.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.
Blaise Pascal
One is punished most for one’s virtues.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell.
Seneca
The liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction.
Seneca
A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes that men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple foundation of his own private vices. It would astound him to realize that they have actually, by their strange erratic path, avoided his vices as well as his virtues.
G.K. Chesterton
Two distinctive traits especially identify beyond a doubt a strong and dominant character. One trait is contempt for external circumstances, when one is convinced that men ought to respect, to desire, and to pursue only what is moral and right, that men should be subject to nothing, not to another man, not to some disturbing passion, not to Fortune. The second trait, when your character has the disposition I outlined just now, is to perform the kind of services that are significant and most beneficial; but they should also be services that are a severe challenge, that are filled with ordeals, and that endanger not only your life but also the many comforts that make life attractive.Of these two traits, all the glory, magnificence, and the advantage, too, let us not forget, are in the second, while the drive and the discipline that make men great are in the former.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who possessed extreme courage and extreme kindness. We show greatness not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.
Blaise Pascal
When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Virtue has need of limits.
Montesquieu
Cling to the One who clings to nothing;And so clinging, cease to cling.
Thiruvalluvar
Folded hands may conceal a dagger --Likewise a foe's tears.
Thiruvalluvar
The vast world rainless, one may bid adieuTo charity and penance.
Thiruvalluvar
Conquer with forbearanceThe excesses of insolence.
Thiruvalluvar
Virtue alone is happiness; all elseIs else, and without praise.
Thiruvalluvar
[On the virtuous man] "He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.
Plato
When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A city is not adorned by external things, but by the virtue of those who dwell in it.
Epictetus
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered...it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
G.K. Chesterton
This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.
Ayn Rand
Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
Friedrich Nietzsche
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
Confucius
It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
Ayn Rand
Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
Ayn Rand
Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.
Ayn Rand
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Now it is easy to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment, engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that sex which ought to obey.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The human in what it is objectively ever since its beginning is two, two who are different. Each part of what constitutes the unity of the human species corresponds to a proper being and a proper Being, to an identity of one's own. In order to carry out the destiny of humanity, the man-human and the woman-human each have to fulfill what they are and at the same time realize the unity that they constitute.
Luce Irigaray
The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here all guilt ceases, for it cannot cling to such flowers as these.
Gilles Deleuze
The misapprehension about gender performativity is this: that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.
Judith Butler
It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision.
Ayn Rand
It [ballet] is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.
Ayn Rand
A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet’s image of man.
Ayn Rand
Dance madly as if all of life is meant for dancing and celebrating.
Osho
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.
Criss Jami
Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
- a bad conscience is indeed able to make life interesting.
Søren Kierkegaard
When we criticize people, their consciences console them. When we love them, their consciences indict them.
C. Terry Warner
But it is obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis. To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.
Albert Camus
. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.
Albert Camus
Trouble is the place where you find yourself when your judgment malfunction
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Conscience is the parliament in our mind. It depends on who holds the majority
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death
Henry David Thoreau
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.
Jeremy Bentham
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Michel de Montaigne
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Henry David Thoreau
Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling.
Jean-François de Saint-Lambert