The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
~ Rousseau
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Virtue
Ideally like stars
Ideals are like stars; You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as our guides, and following them reach your destiny.
~ Carl Schurz
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Virtue
The simplest, quickest and surest means to becoming known as a virtuous person is to work on yourself, to actually be virtuous. Examine each virtue, and you will see that they all were achieved with work and exercise.
~ Socrates
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Real goodness
Real goodness is not something that can be acquired in an instant, but only through constant effort, because real goodness lies in constantly striving for perfection.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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On empathy
This was a particularly interesting (and difficult) post to research and write. There is a wealth of literature about empathy, and I found a lot of it surprising. I feel kind of like the kid who opened up the back of dad’s watch to see how it works and now is sitting amidst a cubic yard of springs and gears wondering how to put it all back together.
~ David Gross from, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SMziBSCT9fiz5yG3L/notes-on-empathy
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At 19,000 words and 77 minutes of reading, this is a small book. If you click through, you’ll quickly discover that it is also one of 50–or–so, similarly–sized “posts” by Gross on lesswrong.com. Fortunately, he didn’t let his “wondering how to put it all back together” stop him from taking it all apart. Entirely apart, dissected from every direction, and including diagrams.
Even if this topic, author, and specific linked-article aren’t of interest, I encourage you to click over to Lesswrong. It is a magnificent web site, beautifully simple to behold, and easy to read for hours on end. It is one of the very few websites on the Internet that I don’t instinctively glip to my browser’s show-reader-view. Lesswrong is jammed full of useful features for a reader. Lesswrong is quite literally what Wikipedia should be in terms of user experience and appearance.
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Emptiness
People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.
~ Blaise Pascal
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The way to virtue
The way to fame goes through the palaces, the way to happiness goes through the markets, the way to virtue goes through the deserts.
~ Chinese proverb
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Virtue and vice
When the intellect becomes the slave of vices and passions, the supporter of lies, it becomes not only a perversion, but an illness, and we cannot see the difference between truth and falsehood, good and evil, virtue and vice.
~ William Ellery Channing
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Reward for virtue
The reward for virtue is the understanding of the good deed.
~ Cicero
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Virtue stands firm
This is the divine law of life: That only virtue stands firm. All the rest is nothing.
~ Pythagoras
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Virtue and adversity
I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it, I’ll wish to bear it courageously with bravery and honor. Wouldn’t I prefer not to fall into war? But if war does befall me, I’ll wish to carry nobly the wounds, starvation, and other necessities of war. Neither am I so crazy as to desire illness, but if I must suffer illness, I’ll wish to do nothing rash or dishonorable. The point is not to wish for these adversities, but for the virtue that makes adversities bearable.
~ Seneca
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