“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
“I never thought an angry person valiant:
Virtue is never aided by a vice.”
Lovel, Act IV, Scene iii
The New Inn, or The Light Heart (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)
Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer
Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Life and Destiny (1913)
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian
Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), IV
Context: He never invested his whole moral capital in a man, a book, or a cause, but treasured up wisdom wherever it could be picked up, always with scrupulous acknowledgment … His eclecticism saving him from the cycle of hope-disillusion-despair, his highest effectiveness was as a skirmisher in the daily battle for light and justice, as a critic of new doctrine and a refurbisher of old, as a voice of warning and encouragement. That his action has not been in vain, we can measure by how little Shaw's iconoclasm stirs our blood; we no longer remember what he destroyed that was blocking our view.
“Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.”
James Richardson (1950) American poet
#398
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist
J'ai à peindre…un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d'actions mauvaises.
Avis de l'auteur, p. 30; translation p. 3.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)
Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Quoted in [Richard C. Reuben, Man in the Middle, California Lawyer, October 1992, 35]
“Dare to fail. If you never fail, you're never taken risks and that's no way to take on this life.”
Richie Sambora (1959) musician, songwriter
Doctorate Award Speech, Kean University (2004)