The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's ...intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the whole seems to fall into a shape As if I saw alike my work and self... And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appeti...te for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a "taxing- machine;" to the contented, a "machine for securing property." Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking for... perfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As blacks, we need not be afraid that encouraging moral development, a conscience and guilt will prevent social action. Black chil...dren without the ability to feel a normal amount of guilt will victimize their parents, relatives and community first. They are unlikely to be involved in social action to improve the black community. Their self-centered personalities will cause them to look out for themselves without concern for others, black or white.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They have left thee naked, Lord, O that they had! This garment too I wish they had deny'd.... Thee with thy self they have too richly clad; Opening the purple wardrobe in thy side. O never could there be garment too good For thee to wear, but this of thine own Blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both were predominantly ethical in aim and doctrine; theory of knowledge (logic) and of nature (physics) served rather as the scaf...folding rather than as an integral portion of their philosophic structure, while metaphysics, the kernel of Platonic and Aristotelian speculation, receded altogether into the background.... When we ask as to the nature of the philosophic life, the two schools give widely different answers. To the Stoic, it consists in following virtue, in obedience to an authoritative law of nature or reason; the sage, by subjugating emotion, and by detachment from the restless world of circumstance, disciplines his soul to self-sufficiency and inward independence. To the Epicurean, the good life is that of rational enjoyment of all the satisfactions which the world affords.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discr...iminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count ...for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »