A Quote by Michel de Montaigne
I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.
Related Quotes
Most humans know their own "reason" only in the sense that Hume defined it, as "a slave to the passions"-and by "passions" he meant not moral passions or the passions of transcendent genius, but only low appetites or base desires, which society and economy ultimately shape and spur on in us.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
Blessed the one who continually humbles himself willingly; he will be crowned by the One who willingly humbled himself for our sake.
Do we not see God at work in our circumstances? Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovreignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us? Are we prepared to be separated from the outward, evident blessings of God? Until Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we each have goals of our own which we serve. Our faith is real, but it is not yet permanent. And God is never in a hurry. If we are willing to wait, we will see God pointing out that we have been interested only in his blessings, instead of God Himself.
By directing our sentiments, passions, and reason toward the common human plight, imagination grants us the advantages of a moralexistence. What we surrender of innocent love of self is exchanged for the safeties and pleasures of belonging to a larger whole. We are born dependent, but only imagination can bind our passions to other human beings.
Some men mistake generosity for charity: these flatter themselves that they are giving gratuitously, whilst they are merely rewarding secret services offered their vanity.
Strive with all your might to bring your interior activity into accord with God, and you will overcome exterior passions.
In order to preserve the dominion of our own passions, it behooves us to be constantly and strictly on our guard against the influence and infection of the passions of others.
You only have to glance at the daily news to see how passions are stirred by claims of exclusive loyalty to one's own kin, one's own clan, one's own country, and one's own church. These ties that bind are vital to our communities and our lives, but they can also be twisted into a noose.
Wealth comes from the production and exchange of goods and services. If someone efficiently produces a good that many people willingly trade their money for, he becomes wealthy.
Saving the biosphere depends first and foremost on human beings reaching mutual understanding and unforced agreement as to common ends. And that intersubjective accord occurs only in the noosphere. Anything short of that noospheric accord will continue to destroy the biosphere.
Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.
Here in Sweden and the Nordic countries, we have come a relatively long way when it comes to LGBTQI rights. But what we see as self-evident or at least would like to believe is self-evident - is unthinkable in other parts of the world.
Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.
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