There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
Interpretation
Pursuing truth, even at great personal cost, brings more fulfillment than celebrating false victories with the crowd.
This quote emphasizes the value of adhering to truth, even when it leads to suffering or hardship. It suggests that the deep satisfaction derived from standing for what is right and true far surpasses the fleeting pleasure of joining in the celebrations of those who have achieved temporary success through falsehood or error.
In practice
This quote could be used in a graduation speech to encourage students to seek truth in their future endeavors.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Suffering is a gift; in its hidden mercy
You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!
Don't be swayed by the false values and goals of this world, but put Christ and his will first in everything you do.
There's a difference [between taking a charge and flopping]. We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren't really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water. That's kind of like, where are your balls at?
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
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