"The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice."
Read quote
66 likes
Quote collection
Joseph Butler quotes (page 1 of 2)
39 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed."
Read quote
53 likes
"Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?"
Read quote
46 likes
"Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food"
Read quote
18 likes
"But to us, probability is the very guide of life."
Read quote
15 likes
"Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections."
Read quote
14 likes
"Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others."
Read quote
9 likes
"Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else."
Read quote
8 likes
"As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow."
Read quote
7 likes
"Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not."
Read quote
7 likes
"Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of Nature appears deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow, successive steps. And there is a plan of things beforehand laid out, which, from the nature of it, requires various systems of means, as well as length of time, in order to the carrying on its several parts into execution."
Read quote
6 likes
"People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable."
Read quote
6 likes
"God Almighty is, to be sure, unmoved by passion or appetite, unchanged by affection; but then it is to be added that He neither sees nor hears nor perceives things by any senses like ours; but in a manner infinitely more perfect."
Read quote
6 likes
"Virtue, as such, naturally procures considerable advantages to the virtuous."
Read quote
6 likes
"The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity, and with respect only to the present world, is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world."
Read quote
6 likes
"It is not at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered."
Read quote
6 likes
"People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way."
Read quote
6 likes
"Happiness does not consist in self-love."
Read quote
6 likes
"The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else."
Read quote
5 likes
"Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects."
Read quote
5 likes