A Quote by Adam Smith
Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
Related Quotes
He who does the most good is the greatest man. Power, authority, dignity, honors, wealth and station--these are so far valuable as they put it into the hands of men to be more exemplary and more useful than they could be in an obscure and private life. But then these are means conducting to an end, and that end is goodness.
It is a common teaching of the Saints that one of the principal means of leading a good and exemplary life is certainly modesty and the mortification of the eyes. Just as there is nothing better than modesty to preserve devotion in a soul and to edify one's neighbor, so too, there is nothing worse than immodesty and licentious glances to expose a person to the danger of becoming lax and loose in morals.
[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.
While learning the language in France a young man's morals, health and fortune are more irresistibly endangered than in any country of the universe.
I've always tried to avoid politics because most politicians that I know are quite dirty in terms of human dignity, ethics and morals.
When you insist someone submit to your will, it is accomplished most easily if you give them a small victory so they can retain their dignity while they do as you insist. ~ Kahlan Mother Confessor
The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, 'morality.' Morality is the 'idea' of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an 'intellectual' man, a so-called independent, a 'freethinker.'
The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.
Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.
If fortune makes a wicked man prosperous and a good man poor, there is no need to wonder. For the wicked regard wealth as everything, the good as nothing. And the good fortune of the bad cannot take away their badness, while virtue alone will be enough for the good.
It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.
Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one.
I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.
The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.
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