"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
“I believe… that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
Letter to John Adams (1816)
1810s
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Thomas Jefferson 456
3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826Related quotes
“I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”
George Gordon Byron
(1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
I-II, q. 32, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)
André Maurois
(1885–1967) French writer
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship
“I was astonished at the pleasure to be derived from doing good.”
J’ai été étonné du plaisir qu’on éprouve en faisant le bien.
Letter 21: Le Vicomte de Valmont to la Marquise de Merteuil. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://www.cartage.org.lb/fr/themes/livreBiblioteques/Livres/Biblio(fr)/L/Lacl/Liaisonsdangereuses/lett21.htm
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Barry Long
(1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer
Love is not a feeling ~ The Article (1995)
Context: Have you learned yet that you only suffer when you think about events or feel about them, that you don't suffer from events themselves? Have you learned yet that every thought about yourself is a thought of the past, that worry is thinking and that all thinking eventually leads to worry, fear and insecurity? If so, each time you go to think, or catch the thinker thinking even about "good" things like last night's movie, don't; stop. Not because Barry Long says so but because you've realised the truth of thinking in your own experience. It's what you've learned from life, not from someone else's experience. Therefore it is the truth for you now and every moment. Otherwise you must go on thinking and go on suffering. One day, when you've had enough of the pain, you'll come to your senses. Have you learned yet that every feeling is a feeling of the past and that every "good" feeling soon changes and eventually becomes the feeling of doubt, confusion, boredom or sorrow? If so, stop believing your feelings; don't act on them; wait.
Philip Melanchthon
(1497–1560) German reformer
They judged that, indisputably, by the study of these disciplines not only was the tongue refined, but also the wildness and barbarity of people’s minds was amended.
Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 66