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
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.
In practice
During a discussion on ethical decision-making, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of personal integrity.
Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.
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.
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.
Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.
To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.
Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.
Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.
Here, everything is tragic through and through, and the will, that fain would shape a world according to its wish, at last can reach no greater satisfaction than the breaking of itself in dignified annulment.
Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be known through charity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.