“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
“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)
Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Life and Destiny (1913)
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
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.”
#398
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
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)
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.”
Doctorate Award Speech, Kean University (2004)
