For every inferior, earthly pleasure we forego, a superior, celestial
one is substituted. To purify our lives requires simply to weed out
what is foul and noxious and the sound and innocent is supplied, as nature
purifies the blood if we will but reject the impurities.
Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions..... than in the non-performance of base ones. Aristotle.
more glorious condition of being can we imagine than from being
impure to becoming pure ? It is almost desirable to be impure that
we may be the subject of this improvement. That I am innocent to
myself! That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted
for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life
a sacrament! May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness.
May I not forget that I am impure and viscous.
May I not cease to
love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new
and more perfect day. May I so live and refine my life as fitting
myself for a society ever higher than I actually enjoy. May
I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I
love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered
self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment
think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never
a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one
is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what
fane, what sacred 
place can there be but the innermost part of my own being?
The possibility of my own improvement, this is to be cherished. As
I regard myself, so I am. Oh my dear friends, I have not forgotten
you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate you with my ideal
self. I had ceased to have faith in myself. I thought I was
grown up and become what I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring
with me. In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is in
the beginning spring and vernal season of life. It is the love of virtue
that makes us young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very
aspiration after the perfect. I love and worship myself with a love
which absorbs my love for the world. May I dream not that I shunned
vice; May I dream that I loved and practiced virtue. Thoreau.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as
our higher nature slumbers. He is
blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day,
and the divine being established.
Man flows at once to God as soon as the channel of purity, physical,
intellectual, and moral, is open.
We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be
said to be at heart, on the side of truth.
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his
heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed
in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound;
Virtue, I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night,
in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;' The man who
renounces himself, comes to himself.
"Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise: Then be the fool of
virtue, not of vice."
'Supreme' virtue is not intentionally virtuous, that's what makes it
truly virtuous. Chinese proverb.
One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence.
The perfume of flowers goes not against the wind, not even the perfume
of sandalwood of rose-bay or jasmine; but the perfume of virtue
travels against the wind and reaches unto the end of the world.
Let a wise man remove impurities from himself even as a silversmith
removes impurities from the silver; one after one, little by little,
again and again.
The notion of virtue is not to be arrived at except through direct contemplation
of the divine essence.
Unless virtue guide us, our choice must be wrong: If thou hast
not conquered thy self in that which is thy own particular weakness, thou
hast no title to virtue. If you would conquer your weakness, you must never
gratify it.
Most men have sufficient contempt for what is mean, to resolve that
they will abstain from it, and a few virtue enough to abide by their resolution,
but not often does one attain to such lofty contempt, as to require no
resolution to be made.
That virtue we appreciate, is as much ours as another's; We see
so much only as we possess.
When virtue is present, all subordinate powers sleep.
We need not look elsewhere for the source of order and of the virtues
than in ourselves.
Wean yourselves little by little, that is the gist of what I have to
say. Rumi.
Virtue is ours by the ancient staple of the soul; vice is due to the
commerce of a soul with the outer world.
Felicity, then, is not the reward of virtue, it is virtue itself.
What is vulgar, and the essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward? It really is..... more blessed to give than to receive. He who gives...teaches, he who receives... learns.
Generosity is not giving someone that which they need more than you, generosity is giving someone that which you need,.....more than they do.
One of lifes greatest accomplishments....the ability to truly admire something.... without the desire to possess it!
In regard to purity, I do not know whether I am much worse or better than my acquaintances. If I continue my thought to myself, I appear, whether by constitution or education, irrecovably impure, as if I should be shunned by my fellow-men if they knew me better, as if I were two inconsistent natures; but again, when I observe how the mass of men speak of women and chastity.....with how little love and reverence.....I feel so far that I am better than they. I think that none of my acquaintances has a greater love and admiration for chastity than I have. Perhaps it is necessary that one should stand low himself in order to reverence what is high in others.
Thoreau.
The constant inquiry that nature puts is: "Are you virtuous? Then you can behold me." Beauty, fragrance, music, sweetness, and joy of all kinds are for the virtuous.
As the sun and rain is to a vegetable garden, so is virtue to bodily health.
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods. Aristotle.
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.
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