A Quote by John Ruskin

Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along. — © John Ruskin
Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.
If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all.
Because all the societies, all the nations, all the cultures, have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them, not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very flowering of existence - nothing is higher than it. But no culture, no society, no civilization is ready to accept a simple truth.
We've all seen great actors and actresses who are missing a certain chemistry. And it's not about getting along or not getting along.
Getting along with the gang in one place is not any harder than getting along in another. It depends about 98 percent on your own behavior.
Strength, Courage, Mastery, and Honor are the alpha virtues of men all over the world. They are the fundamental virtues of men because without them, no 'higher' virtues can be entertained. You need to be alive to philosophize. You can add to these virtues and you can create rules and moral codes to govern them, but if you remove them from the equation altogether you aren't just leaving behind the virtues that are specific to men, you are abandoning the virtues that make civilization possible.
My communism attempts basically to create a shared society, that's all; a shared society in which individuality will flourish, along with love, and along with mutual respect.
The sin of worldliness is a preoccupation with the things of this temporal life. It's accepting and going along with the views and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical. I believe that the key to our tendencies toward worldliness lies primarily in the two words “going along”. We simply go along with the values and practices of society.
The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
I suspect I was not the first 21-year-old who thought he knew more than he did. And one of the virtues of age, one of the virtues of getting married and becoming a father, is it often leads one to take a more measured approach to life.
My sister, with her ratty red-highlighted hair and her linen pajamas and her combat boots—how could she possibly worry about being possessed by a goddess? What goddess would want her, except the goddess of chewing gum?
Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us 't were all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor - Both thanks and use.
The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility.
What are you doing?" "Kneeling before a goddess." "I'm not a goddess." "You are. A goddess, a princess, a queen. As a soldier, I pledge myself to your service. As a prince, I grant you any boon within my power. As a man, I ask to sit at your feet and worship you. Ask me to do anything for you and I will do it.
Education makes life self-reliant. It inspires man to live with dignity in the society. It is the foremost requisite of a teacher to identify his own virtues. He needs to live supported by his inherent virtues-and must continue to uphold them.
Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition.
We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.
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