Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.
William PennRead
God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Resisting evil is more meaningful than simply praying about it.
William Penn highlights the importance of action over ritualistic behavior. He suggests that when individuals choose to resist temptation and act morally, they are serving a higher purpose more effectively than by merely performing prayers or religious rites without true commitment to virtue.
Themes
TemptationEvilPrayerActionMoralityVirtue
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on ethical decision-making, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of personal integrity.
More from William Penn
All quotes →Where thou art Obliged to speak, be sure speak the Truth: For Equivocation is half way to Lying, as Lying, the whole way to Hell.
William PennRead
Man, being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects.
William PennRead
Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.
William PennRead
To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.
William PennRead
Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.
William PennRead
Similar quotes
But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.
C. S. LewisRead
There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.
Thomas PaineRead
A man who is truthful and does not mean ill even to his adversary will be slow to believe charges even against his foes. He will, however, try to understand the viewpoints of his opponents and will always keep an open mind and seek every opportunity of serving his opponents.
Mahatma GandhiRead
In this we see the wondrous virtue of the Lord: that the power dwelling in His body should communicate to perishable things the efficacy to heal, and that the divine activity should issue forth even from the hem of His garment. For God is not perceptible by the senses, to be enclosed within a body. The assumption of a body did not limit the nature of His power; but for our redemption His power took upon it the frailty of our body.
Hilary Of PoitiersRead
In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
HypatiaRead
Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.
Henry David ThoreauRead