The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Interpretation
True goodness requires the ability to choose wrong but opting for right instead; otherwise, it may be mere laziness or lack of will.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld's quote emphasizes that true moral character is determined by the capacity to commit wrongdoing and the conscious decision to refrain from it. Without the power to be wicked, one's goodness may not stem from virtue but rather from an absence of choice, akin to laziness or lack of ambition.
In practice
In a debate about ethics, one might use this quote to illustrate that true virtue requires the capacity for choice.
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.
Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine. His head trails a wake through the galaxy of the absurd.
What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!" "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!
I think there's a large worry in queer communities about imitating straight people, when queerness has its own identity and maybe can be a radical force that should be dismantling stuff that locks people into structures.
If you look at all the notions we accept about who we are, you find that they are all based upon our perceptual experiences.
You carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment.
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