Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.
Interpretation
Public practices significantly influence individual moral habits more than personal failings affect society as a whole.
This quote highlights the profound impact that collective public practices have on shaping the moral character of individuals. It suggests that positive habits cultivated through societal norms can permeate personal lives more swiftly than the negative behaviors of individuals can corrupt the broader community.
In practice
During a discussion on ethics in society, I might bring up this quote to emphasize the importance of positive public norms.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes.
Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.
The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
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