
“To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.”
Graziella (1849), Pt. IV, ch. 5
Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Context: Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Aristotle's teaching concerns the goals of ethical conduct. Unlike the moralists, Aristotle does not say that morality is a thing of absolute worth or that the virtuous person acts in order to adhere to a moral rule or universalizable maxim. And unlike the utilitarians, he does not say morality is good because it contributes to civic peace or to private gain and reputation. Instead, Aristotle says over and over again that the ethically excellent human being acts for the sake of the noble, for the sake of the beautiful.
The human being of fine character seeks to display his own fineness in word and in deed, to show the harmony of his soul in action and the rightness of his choice in the doing of graceful and gracious deeds. The beauty of his action has less to do with the cause that his action will serve or the additional benefits that will accrue to himself or another — though there usually will be such benefits. It has, rather, everything to do with showing forth in action the beautiful soul at work, exactly as a fine dancer dances for the sake of dancing finely. As the ballerina both exploits and resists the downward pull of gravity to rise freely and gracefully above it, so the person of ethical virtue exploits and elevates the necessities of our embodied existence to act freely and gracefully above them. Fine conduct is the beautiful and intrinsically fulfilling being-at-work of the harmonious or excellent soul.
“To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.”
Graziella (1849), Pt. IV, ch. 5
“I look at things for the art sake and the beauty sake and for the deal sake.”
New York Magazine (11 July 1988), p. 24
1980s
“The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.”
L'art pour l'art est un vain mot. L'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche....
Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876). Eng. Transl by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort in Letters of George Sand Vol. III, p. 242
“Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.”
Book III, 1280b.30–1281a.3
Politics
Context: A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange.... Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.
“Never be clever for the sake of being clever
For the sake of showing off.”
"So You Want To Write A Fugue", work's text
“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
Context: I will keep faith with death in my heart, yet will remember that faith with death and the dead is only wickedness and dark voluptuousness and enmity against humankind, if it is given power over our thought and contemplation. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. And with that, I wake up.
Summa Contra Gentiles, III,130,3
As quoted in Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1960) by René Jules Dubos, Ch. 3 "Pasteur in Action"