#virtues

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues. ↗

— Kong Fu Zi

#humility #solid #solid foundation #virtues

The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection. ↗

— Guillaume Apollinaire

#nature #plastic #purity #subjection #truth

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#believe #charms #contemplating #faults #flatter

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#death #faith #life #patience #religion

The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127) ↗

— Swami Satchidananda

#christianity #dharma #ethics #judaism #niyama

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#credit #crimes #even #everything #forgive

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons. ↗

— Aristotle

#most #other #persons #those #useful

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards. ↗

— George Farquhar

#like #own #rewards #their #virtues

The home is the chief school of human virtues. ↗

— William Ellery Channing

#chief #human #school #virtues

Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the fucking rules. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#good #hell #virtues #life