In Praise of Virtue

[Skull]

He that urges gratitude pleads the cause both of God and men, for without it we can neither be sociable nor religious.
We can be thankful to a friend for a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Seneca

 

[Skull]

Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.
When a sage sees this great Unity and his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow can ever be near him?

Isha Upanishad

 

[Skull]

Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.

Pope Pius XI, 1922-39

 

[Skull]

“Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”
Pope Pius XI

 

[Skull]

"Every virtue despises everything of a mortal form or nature, but chiefly honours the immortal. But this is especially the serious purpose of temperance, holding in contempt the pleasures which nail the soul to the body, and firmly established on holy pedestals, as Plato says. [Plato, Phaedrus, 254b.]
For how does temperance not make us perfect, banishing wholly from us the imperfect and passionate? In brief, the excessive domination of the passions does not permit men to be men, but draws them down to the irrational nature, and the brutal and the lawless."

Iamblichus

 

[Libby von H]

Hesiod, Theogony

Homer and Hesiod the two destroyers of morality as Plato shows very clearly.
Why do people quote as if they were taught nothing.

Here is the chart

Is it some perverse pleasure that makes people like you recommend such stuff !! The most popular philosophy book in all of Western Culture is THE REPUBLIC and Plato excoriates Homer and Hesiod for misleading people and speaking blasphemy.

 

[Libby von H]

"Every virtue despises everything of a mortal form or nature, but chiefly honours the immortal. But this is especially the serious purpose of temperance, holding in contempt the pleasures which nail the soul to the body, and firmly established on holy pedestals, as Plato says. [Plato, Phaedrus, 254b.]
For how does temperance not make us perfect, banishing wholly from us the imperfect and passionate? In brief, the excessive domination of the passions does not permit men to be men, but draws them down to the irrational nature, and the brutal and the lawless."

Iamblichus

But this originates in Plato's REPUBLIC. and Temperance as I recall is the lowest of the 4 Cardinal Virtues. Prudence,the guidance in all things by what is TRUE, is the virtue that puts temperance in its rightful place

Even Cicero sees this

 

[Skull]

Homer and Hesiod the two destroyers of morality as Plato shows very clearly.
Why do people quote as if they were taught nothing.
[...]
Is it some perverse pleasure that makes people like you recommend such stuff !! The most popular philosophy book in all of Western Culture is THE REPUBLIC and Plato excoriates Homer and Hesiod for misleading people and speaking blasphemy.

One quote does not make me perverse; unless the entire thread disgusts you.
And I was taught nothing - nothing beyond high school.
I admire the Platonist Thomas Taylor, was he a blasphemer?

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/Thomas_Taylors_intro_to_Plato.pdf

 

[Skull]

Never have the benevolent left their parents behind.

Mencius

 

[Skull]

Though destiny wrest away all earthly pleasures, man can still be happy by clinging to the simple, true, and lasting soul-joys. They come by deep thinking, introspection, spiritual inspiration, and meditation. Gather, therefore, not only wholesome joys from the garden of material life; learn also, with your loved ones, to wander in the garden of meditation and Self-realization, and there gather the joy everlasting.

From Wine of the Mystic by Yogananda Paramahansa

 

[Skull]

There are seven marks of a wise man. The wise man does not speak before him who is greater than he in wisdom; and does not break in upon the speech of his fellow; he is not hasty to answer; he questions according to the subject matter; and answers to the point; he speaks upon the first thing first, and the
last last; regarding that which he has not understood he says, I do not understand it, and acknowledges the truth.

Mishnah, Pirke Aboth, 5

 

[Skull]

Of divine goods, the first and chiefest is wisdom; and next after it, sobriety of spirit; a third, resultant from the blending of both these with valour, is righteousness; and valour itself is fourth.

Plato, Laws, i, 631

 

[Skull]

There is only one God, sole and supreme, without beginning or parentage, whose energies, diffused through the world, we invoke under various names . . . Through the mediation of the subordinate gods the common father both of themselves and of all men is honored in a thousand different ways by mortals who are thus in accord in spite of their discord.

— Maximus of Madaura