Joseph Butler Quotes

43 quotes in 635 categories

• The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.
• It is not at all incredible, that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet…
• As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a…
• Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to…
• Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food
• The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive…
• People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become…
• Happiness does not consist in self-love.
• The satisfaction that accompanies good acts is itself not the motivation of the act; satisfaction is not the motive, but only the consequence.
• Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and…
• Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love…
• Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed,…
• The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested…
• The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular…
• The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone; therefore the appetites and passions are placed…
• But to us, probability is the very guide of life.
• Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.
• People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable.
• Virtue, as such, naturally procures considerable advantages to the virtuous.
• Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be…

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