Best virtue & ends Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“When what has been created in time according to the temporal order has reached maturity, it ceases from natural growth. But when what has been brought about by the knowledge of God through the practice of the virtues has reached maturity, it starts to grow anew. For the end of one stage constitutes the starting point of the next.”

Has Beens Ends Christian Order Next Grows Growth Natural Practice Virtue Stage Starting Cease Maturity Orthodox Starting Point Knowledge Of God

Author:Maximus the Confessor

“No benefit comes from a just man's prayer if he who asks for it finds more pleasure in sin than in virtue. For Samuel mourned over Saul when he sinned, but he was not able to obtain God's mercy, for his grief was not supported by the necessary change of life on the part of the sinner. Hence God put an end to the pointless grief of His servant, saying to him, 'How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?' (I Sam. 16:1).”

Ifs Men Long Ends Able Christian Asks Prayer Sin Pleasure Grief Virtue Seeing Benefits Mercy Israel Servant Life Changing Sinner Orthodox Rejected Mourn Pointless Necessary Change

Author:Maximus the Confessor

“Just as the teaching of the Law and the prophets, being harbingers of the coming advent of the Logos in the flesh, guide our souls to Christ (cf. Gal. 3:24), so the glorified incarnate Logos of God is Himself a harbinger of His spiritual advent, leading our souls forward by His own teachings to receive His divine and manifest advent. He does this ceaselessly, by means of the virtues converting those found worthy from the flesh to the spirit. And He will do it at the end of the age, making manifest what has hitherto been hidden from men.”

Men Mean Doe Soul Ends Age Christian Spiritual Law Spirit Found Christ Virtue Teaching Divine Worthy Guides Flesh Prophet Orthodox Manifest Advent Converting Cfs Logos Gals Harbinger

Author:Maximus the Confessor

“We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is God’s arrival that is the important event.”

“In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.”

Knows May Ends Matter Done Enough Use Steps Virtue Mere Deeds Practicals Endeavor

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“Recommend virtue to your children, that alone - not wealth - can give happiness. It upholds in adversity and the thought of it and my art prevents me from putting an end to my life.”

Giving Children Art Ends Wealth Virtue Our Children Adversity Your Children

Author:Ludwig van Beethoven

“Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end. - 'Metaphysical Principles of Virtue”

Humans Ends Humanity Principles Virtue One Thing Particular Adoption Metaphysical Compelled Realised Human Freedom

Author:Immanuel Kant

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Humans Ends Facts Christian Virtue Sea Fit Sorrow Moved Pity Sickness Sensibility Sincerely Fear Of Death Melting Liver Brethren Toothache Gout

Book:Collected Letters: 1820-1825

Source: Collected Letters: 1820-1825

“The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.”

Source: Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality

“In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. It is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society, all the little inconveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions, which will conciliate others, and make them pleased with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the good will of another!”

“When the end comes, you will be esteemed by the world and rewarded by God, not because you have won the love and respect of the princes of the earth, however powerful, but rather for having loved, defended and cherished one such as I. What you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own.”

World Ends Earth Powerful Virtue Clear Testimony Indication Love And Respect

Author:Giordano Bruno

“The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.”

Ends Self Able Virtue Duty Revolution Constitution Defense Punishment Welfare Republic Self Defense

Author:Georg Buchner

“We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.”

Ends Body Virtue Failing Dear

Book:Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Source: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

“For women to be supplying the soldiery with banners, flannel shirts and other material comforts was, superficially, all of a piece with their ministrations to their menfolk at home. Such contributions to the war effort were socially acceptable because they could be seen as an extension into the military sphere of the traditional female virtues of charity, nurture and needlework. Yet in reality what the women were doing represented the thin end of a far more radical wedge. Consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves. And many of them relished it.”

“Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.”

Source: Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste

“There learned arts do flourish in great honour And poets's wits are had in peerless price; Religion hath lay power, to rest upon her, Advancing virtue, and suppressing vice. For end all good, all grace there freely grows, Had people grace it gratefully to use: For God His gifts there plenteously bestows, But graceless men them greatly do abuse.”

People Men Art Ends Use Grows Virtue Grace Poet Abuse England Lays Vices Wit Honour Advancing Suppressing

Book:The poetical works of Edmund Spenser: With memoir and critical dissertations

Source: The poetical works of Edmund Spenser: With memoir and critical dissertations

“Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd; Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave, Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool. But for one end, one much-neglected use, Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants Are few, and without opulence supplied;) This noble end is, to produce the soul; To show the virtues in their fairest light; To make humanity the minister Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast The generous luxury the gods enjoy.”

“He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.”

Ends Laughing Virtue Greatness Duty Laughed Ridicule Mirth

Author:Johann Kaspar Lavater

“Death is the advertisement, at the end of an autobiography, wherein people discover its virtues.”

People Ends Death Virtue Autobiography Advertisements

Book:The Spinster Book

Source: The Spinster Book

“But I remember the morning after The Mask of Virtue-which is the first play I did at the West End-that some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said-for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well, and have never forgiven him.”

“What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.”

Ends Values Virtue Modern Mankind Materials Standards Constant Advertising Appeals Material Things Elevating Standards And Values

Book:Singing Waters

Source: Singing Waters

“Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning and training, to be among the most god-like things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something god-like and blessed.”

Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation

“Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.”

Kind Ends Character Facts Certain Causes Moral Virtue Vices Disposition

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.”

Men Wells Mean Ends Moral Virtue Gains Performances Function Aim Determine Prudence Moral Virtues

Author:Aristotle

“Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.”

Ends Choices Moral Virtue Our Choices Secured Moral Virtues

Author:Aristotle

“[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.”

Mean Ends Action Choices Moral Virtue Achieve Intellect Prudence Our Choices Moral Virtues

Author:Aristotle

“We find that Good and Evil happen alike to all Men on this Side of the Grave; and as the principle Design of Tragedy is to raise Commiseration and Terror in the Minds of the Audience, we shall defeat this great End, if we always make Virtue and Innocence happy and successful.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Addison (Illustrated)

“The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.”

Ends Moral Teach Virtue Duty Habit Morality Embrace Vices Representation Speculation Begets Deformity

Book:Moral Philosophy

Source: Moral Philosophy

“There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. In concentrating on the ends of choice, the conservative, by neglecting the conditions of choice, loses that very morality of conduct with which he is so concerned. And the libertarian, by concentrating only on the means, or conditions, of choice and ignoring the ends, throws away an essential moral defense of his own position.”

“According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices.”

Men Made Ends Courses Found Virtue Speech Fortune Vices Tongue Life And Death Unfortunate Worldly Solomon Worldly Things

Book:Miscellaneous works

Source: Miscellaneous works

“Man is an Animal, formidable both from his Passions and his Reason; his Passions often urging him to great Evils, and his Reason furnishing Means to achieve them. To train this Animal, and make him amenable to Order; to inure him to a Sense of Justice and Virtue, to withhold him from ill Courses by Fear, and encourage him in his Duty by Hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for Society, hath been the Aim of civil and religious Institutions; and, in all Times, the Endeavour of good and wise Men. The aptest Method for attaining this End, hath been always judged a proper Education.”

“There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone...In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.”

“In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.”

Ends Enough Effort Virtue Guilty Cynicism Purifying

Author:Albert Camus

“When you live the virtues - when you live in that place of God-consciousness - all these rules we have about cause and effect, beginnings and ends, don't have any impact or relevance.”

Ends Causes Consciousness Virtue Effects Impact Relevance Cause And Effect Beginnings And Ends

Author:Wayne Dyer

“Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.”

Source: The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government

“The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.”

“Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, "where annual elections end, there slavery begins." These great men ... should be (chosen) once a year-Like bubbles on the sea of matter bourne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey.”

“Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead”

People Giving Ends Reason Whole Christianity Class Virtue Middle Fit Demand Intellectual Middle Class No Reason Modest His Love Moderates Resignation Adapted

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

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