Aphorism 44
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
Context: That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.
“Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.”
Book III, Ch. 10
Attributed
No. 112
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Context: Whoever does not see his friends in a good light loves them little. To see in a good light. — Whoever does not see in a good light is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover. Whoever does not see in a good light has not been able to lift his mind up to what is there or his heart to what is good.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 158.
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf]
Vice and Virtue, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
“The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one.”
Lectures to Young Men: On Various Important Subjects (1856) Lecture IV : Portrait Gallery
Miscellany
Context: The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes — openly bad and secretly bad.
“The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.”
Le mal que nous faisons ne nous attire pas tant de persécution et de haine que nos bonnes qualités.
Maxim 29.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
