In Praise of Virtue

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The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Patrick Henry

 

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Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

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Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

]ohn Quincy Adams

 

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He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy day. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution nor review.

Victor Hugo

 

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Someone who has a little bit of faith but no wisdom will burst into tears when he sees a crying face and will burst into laughter when he sees someone who is laughing. Considering true whatever people say, like a river he will go wherever he is led.

Tsongkhapa (d. 1419)

 

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Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that shall make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Marcus Aurelius

 

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Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to
be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a
creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of
his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful
master of himself. . . .

Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.

A man will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and
other people, things and other people will alter towards him. . . . Let
a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the
rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. . . .
The divinity that shapes our ends is in ourselves. It is our very
self. . . . All that a man achieves or fails to achieve is the direct result
of his own thoughts. ... A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve
by lifting up his thoughts. He remains weak and abject and miserable
by refusing to lift up his thoughts. . . .

James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

 

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333. Good is virtue until life’s end, good is faith that is steadfast, good is the acquisition of wisdom, and good is the avoidance of evil.

Dhammapada

 

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Life is short and we have not too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

Henri F. Amiel

 

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Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

Robert Kennedy

 

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1 Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own - not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.

Marcus Aurelius, book 2, Hammond translation.

 

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Truth does not pay any homage to any society, ancient and modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die. That society is the greatest, where the highest truths become practical. That is my opinion; and if society is not fit for the highest truths, make it so; and the sooner, the better.

Swami Vivekananda

 

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To perfect the inferior and provide for the lesser belongs even to souls as souls, since their descent was occasioned by forethought for things involved in process and by care for mortals.

Proclus

 

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My counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years [between lives] which we have been describing [in the vision of Er.]

Socrates at end of Republic

 

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https://www.tbsousa.org/v11_10/docs/Questions on Kamma.pdf

Questions answered about Kamma - the volitional cause of virtue & vice.

 

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This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention, the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State; that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long-run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1922.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
H. L. Mencken, 1926.

 

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Yoram Hazony | The Virtue of Nationalism

"Nationalism is the issue of our age. In The Virtue of Nationalism, Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony makes the positive case for nationalism in an honest, reasoned, morally unflinching way. This book offers an eye-opening rethinking of the modern political experience.

Hazony argues that in view of this renewed clash between nationalism and universalism, we will have to make a choice: Either a world of independent states, or a renewal of the ideal of universal empire—which means, inevitably, American empire.
The Virtue of Nationalism compares the options before us, and suggests that if it’s freedom we want, we should fight to preserve a world of independent nations."

 

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All Nations, known in History or in Travels have hoped, believed and expected a future and better State. The Maker of the Universe, the Cause of all Things, whether We call it, Fate or Chance or god has inspired this Hope. If it is a Fraud, we shall never know it. We shall never resent the Imposition, be grateful for the Illusion, nor grieve for the disappointment.

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, May 3, 1816

 

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Lend me now all the powers and all the penetration of thy thought; for the idea of Divinity, which cannot be conceived save by divine assistance, resembles a rapid stream precipitating itself onwards with impetuosity, and often, therefore, outstrips the attention of the listeners, and even of him who teaches.

Hermes Mercurius Trismagistus

 

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THERE is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive. Passions usually have their roots in that which is blemished, crippled, incomplete and insecure within us. The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction.

Eric Hoffer