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
A person is born with desires of the eyes and ears, and a liking for beautiful sights and sounds. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to immorality and lack of restriction, and any ritual principles and propriety will be abandoned.
When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.
I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.
The experience of our generation: _x000D_ that capitalism will not die a natural death.
If you live in free countries, you don't have to spend all your life arguing about freedom because it is all around you. It seems redundant to make a lot of noise about something when, in fact, there it is. But if someone tries to remove it, it becomes important for you to formulate your own defenses of it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.