“Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.”

Letter (5 September 1857), quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 369

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 "Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in…" by Florence Nightingale?

Florence Nightingale81

English social reformer and statistician, and the founder o… 1820–1910

Related quotes

“Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Introduction to The Ethics of Spinoza (1910)

“What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 102
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

“There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“A Muslim should live up to his character, and employ his powers in doing what is good, beneficial and helpful.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

“An Englishman thinks first of his work — his job, he calls it — and then of his sport, and last — a good way last — of his wife.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

“Among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities.”

Galileo Galilei book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

In regard to Kepler's belief of the moon affecting the tides of the Earth, p. 328
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)

“Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 88
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Cada um tem a sua vaidade, e a vaidade de cada um é o seu esquecimento de que há outros com alma igual.

“His glory and greatness suffer from the wrongs he did his fellow men and from the methods he employed.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Le Marquis de Pombal, p. 377
Le marquis de Pombal (1869)

“Great is our God, and great is His power, and his strength is immeasurable”

Carl Linnaeus book Systema Naturae

In the dedication from his 12th edition.
Original in Latin: "Magnus est DEUS noster, & magna est potentia Ejus, & potentia Ejus non est numerus."
Systema Naturae

“Doubtless, it shews the wisdom of God, to have so fram'd things at first, that there can seldom or never need any extraordinary interposition of his power; or the employing from, time to time, an intelligent overseer, to regulate, assist, and control the motions of matter.”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) English natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor

"A Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature," Sect.1 in The Philosophical Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (1725) Vol.2 http://books.google.com/books?id=Y-YJAAAAMAAJ

“Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Florence Nightingale81

Related quotes

Related topics