10 quotes
He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
Manly energy … is the proper rendering [for αρετην], and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of the word.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
Truths … are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
The anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion ... , loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends. ... But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
Exclusively of the abstract science, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, was the Beginning and the End; and that Truth, Knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
It is a dull and obtuse mind, that must divide in order to distinguish; but it is a still worse, that distinguishes in order to divide. In the former, we may contemplate the source of superstition and idolatry; in the latter of schism, heresy, and a seditious and sectarian spirit.
Aids to Reflection (1825)
There is one art, of which every man should be master, the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? In like manner, there is one knowledge, which it is in every man's interest and duty to acquire, namely, self-knowledge: or to what end was man alone, of all animals, endowed by the Creator with the faculty of self-consciousness?
Aids to Reflection (1825)