Joseph Butler

“However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.”

“The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.”

“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 deceived?”

“Consequently it will often happen there will be a desire of particular objects, in cases where they cannot be obtained without manifest injury to others.”

“Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.”

“Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.”

“People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable.”

“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, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it.”

“This was the man, this Balaam, I say, was the man, who desired to die the death of the righteous, and that his last end might be like his; and this was the state of his mind when he pronounced these words.”

“Every one of our passions and affections hath its natural stint and bound, which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree.”

“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 or hatred of anything else.”

“The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.”

“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 within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of.”

“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 shown.”

“The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written.”

“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 affections rest in the external things themselves.”

“For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”

“God Almighty is, to be sure, unmoved by passion or appetite, unchanged by affection; but then it is to be added that He neither sees nor hears nor perceives things by any senses like ours; but in a manner infinitely more perfect.”

“Remember likewise there are persons who love fewer words, an inoffensive sort of people, and who deserve some regard, though of too still and composed tempers for you.”

“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 ourselves as well as to the distressed.”