“Princes may make laws and repeal them, but they can neither make nor destroy virtue, and how indeed should they be able to do what is impossible to the Deity himself? Virtue being as immutable in its nature as the divine will which is the ground of it.”
Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. IV Section II - Containing a Disquisition of the Law of Nature, as it respects the Moral System, interspersed with Observations on Subsequent Religions.
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Ethan Allen 40
American general 1738–1789Related quotes

Part XV - General corollary
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Context: The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed to him! How much is he degraded even below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!
“It is not the trappings that make the prince, nor, indeed, the sword that makes the warrior.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book I: The Book of Three (1964), Chapter 2

From whom then does it receive its eternity and imperishability, if not from him who holds all things together within defined limits, for it is impossible that the nature of bodies (material) should be without a limit, inasmuch as they cannot dispense with a Final Cause, nor exist through themselves.
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

"A Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature" Sect.2 ibid.

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Friendship

“Recommend to your children virtues, that alone can make them happy, not gold.”