Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.
Henri Frederic AmielRead
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Interpretation
One should focus on being helpful to others based on their capabilities rather than personal desires.
This quote by Henri Frederic Amiel emphasizes the importance of contributing to society and helping others, not just in a way that fulfills our own wishes but in alignment with our abilities. It suggests that true fulfillment comes from the difference we make based on what we can offer, rather than what we merely want to achieve for ourselves.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about volunteerism.
Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.
Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.
I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.
The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.
We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.
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