"The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice."
"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."
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Source: Joseph Butler (1798). “The Analogy of Religion: Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. To which are Added, Two Brief Dissertations: I. On Personal Identity. II. On the Nature of Virtue. Together with a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, ... in the Year MDCCLI. By Joseph Butler, ... A New Edition, Corrected. With a Preface, ... by Samuel Halifax, ...”, p.228
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"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?"
"Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food"
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