“Those with wholeness of understanding will be primarily motivated towards Watchfulness by their coming to see clearly that only perfection and nothing else is worthy of their desire and that there is no worse evil than the lack of and removal from perfection. For after this has become clear to them, as well as the fact that the means to this end are virtuous deeds and traits, they will certainly never permit themselves to diminish these means; nor will they ever fail to make use of their full potential. For it would already have become clear to them that if these means were reduced in number or not employed with complete effectiveness, with all of the energy that they called for, true perfection would not be attained through them, but would be lacked to the extent that sufficient exertion was lacking in relation to them.”

— Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 4

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Those with wholeness of understanding will be primarily motivated towards Watchfulness by their coming to see clearly t…" by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto?

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto13

Italian rabbi 1707–1746

Related quotes

“Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

537-539
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I
Context: A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God's sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

“God … must always be sought for Himself, never as a means toward something else. Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many treasures, not even the chief of all treasures. He will be all in all or He will be nothing. God will not be used.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: Man: The Dwelling Place of God (1992), p. 56-57.

“In Plato’s Republic one finds the proposition: God, being perfect, cannot change (not for the better, since "perfect" means that there can be no better; not for the worse, since ability to change for the worse, to decay, degenerate, or become corrupt, is a weakness, an imperfection). The argument may seem cogent, but it is so only if two assumptions are valid: that it is possible to conceive of a meaning for "perfect" that excludes change in any and every respect and that we must conceive God as perfect in just this sense.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984)