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Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one's own efforts.
Thomas Paine
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Virtues are gained through personal effort, and acknowledging the virtues of others can inspire one's own growth.

In this quote, Thomas Paine emphasizes the importance of personal effort in acquiring virtues. He suggests that while virtues are personal achievements that require hard work, recognizing and praising the virtues in others not only strengthens our admiration for them but also motivates us to develop our own virtuous qualities. Thus, the act of praising others becomes a tool for self-improvement.

Themes

VirtueEffortPraiseSelf-ImprovementEncouragement

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech at a personal development seminar.

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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
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That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
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I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
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Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
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The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
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To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected
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