"The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice."
"The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves."
3 likes
Source: Joseph Butler, Stephen L. Darwall (1983). “Five Sermons, Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation Upon the Nature of Virtue”, p.47, Hackett Publishing
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Joseph Butler
"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."
"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"
"But to us, probability is the very guide of life."
"Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections."