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1 " Self- reliance is the greatest of all virtues my friend. "
― Abhijit Naskar , Rowdy Buddha: The First Sapiens (Neurotheology Series)
2 " Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. "
― C.S. Lewis , The Screwtape Letters
3 " Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages a you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you may awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed. "
4 " Certainly all virtues are very dear to God, but humility pleases Him above all the others, and it seems that He can refuse it nothing. "
― Francis de Sales
5 " For Socrates, all virtues were forms of knowledge. To train someone to manage an account for Goldman Sachs is to educate him or her in a skill. To train them to debate stoic, existential, theological, and humanist ways of grappling with reality is to educate them in values and morals. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death. Morality is the product of a civilization, but the elites know little of these traditions. They are products of a moral void. They lack clarity about themselves and their culture. They can fathom only their own personal troubles. They do not see their own bases or the causes of their own frustrations. They are blind to the gaping inadequacies in our economic, social, and political structure and do not grasp that these structures, which they have been taught to serve, must be radically modified or even abolished to stave off disaster. They have been rendered mute and ineffectual. “What we cannot speak about” Ludwig Wittgenstein warned “we must pass over in silence. "
― Chris Hedges , Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
6 " Shame and suffering, as St. Bernard says, are the two ladder-uprights which are set up to heaven, and between those two uprights are the rungs of all virtues fixed, by which one climbs to the joy of heaven… In these two things, in which is all penance, rejoice and be glad, for in return for these, twofold blisses are prepared: in return for shame honour; in return for suffering, delight and rest without end. "
― Philip Zaleski , The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
7 " The moment we go looking for anything outside of ourselves, i.e., when we make our happiness contingent on another, we have a serious problem. All of the emotions and feelings that we have come from within―we have those natural capacities ourselves. If we did not have an appetite to begin with, food would hold no appeal. It does not make us hungry; it merely stimulates that hunger inside of us. The same is true of all virtues and vices. Everything we need to gratify us can be found within, if only we venture to look and not pay heed to the bright and blinding lights that have enthralled most of this world. "
8 " Courage is the most important of all virtues because without it we can't practice any other virtue with consistency. "
9 " The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage. "
