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1 " Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters. "
― Seneca
2 " Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind. "
― Samuel Johnson
3 " Here is the test of wisdom, Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. "
― Walt Whitman , Leaves of Grass
4 " Count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus "
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5 " These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of the slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie. "
― Stephen Crane
6 " Much has been written on the excellence of bats' navigation equipment. It is all false. Tropical bats spend their entire time flying into obstacles with a horrible thudding noise. They specialize in slamming into walls and falling, fluttering onto your face. As my own 'piece of equipment essential for the field' I would strongly recommend a tennis racket; it is devastatingly effective in clearing a room of bats. "
― Nigel Barley , The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut
7 " Older women are of less sexual and reproductive, and thus by extension, matrimonial value. This is just biology meets the Catholic sacrament of matrimony, of which its virtues are 1) pleasing your spouse and 2) making children. Older women, being less fertile and less able to please their spouse, thus make for less virtuous marriages.If the excellence of marriage is grounded in the unitative and procreative telos of sexuality, a woman's youth and fertility are virtuous traits and a virtuous man would rightly prize those traits in a prospective wife.Let us perform an empirical investigation. If we compare societies where the norm of marriage is at a younger age (for the girl) rather than an older age, which marriages are more fruitful? That is, which marriages produce more children and are less likely to end in divorce? I'm sure we are equally acquainted with the results of our modern Western norms, are you acquainted with the results of non-modern Western norms?Excusing, rather than excoriating, modern Western norms is mere sophistry, sophistry which our host has held forth as an ostensibly authentic Catholic view. However, it simply isn't; it is a modern view dressed up in Catholic-sounding phrases. "
8 " ...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes. "
― Catherynne M. Valente
9 " She who has the excellence of home virtues, and can expend within the means of her husband, is a help in the domestic state "
― Thiruvalluvar , تروكرل 'المثنوي المقدس'
10 " They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. "
― W. Somerset Maugham
11 " Many a time, we live life without having access to the thoughts of how the hours of yesterday were spent. This comes to play because of lack of self-analysis and does not help in any way to create the excellence we claim to pursue. "
― Israelmore Ayivor , The Great Hand Book of Quotes
12 " Was the excellence of Socrates or of Shakespeare normal? Was it not rather abnormal, extraordinary? It is, I think, obvious in the first place, that not all that is good is normal; that, on the contrary, the abnormal is often better than the normal... "
― George Edward Moore , Principia Ethica (Philosophical Classics)
13 " It is never easy for any leader to choose between differentiation and equality. You are condemned either way. When you treat everyone equally, you are considered just by majority as equality benefits below average people and they seem to always be in majority. At the same time, you are also condemned because you can’t produce results with people having a crab mentality. However, if you choose to reward the excellence and punish the non-performer, you achieve the desired results but get condemned for being unfair, unjust, cruel and Darwinian. "
― Awdhesh Singh
14 " It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be. "
― Plato , The Republic
15 " If you are ready to trade the hollow self-made beauty of this world for the glorious Christ-built beauty of a set-apart young woman, this is where it all begins. Denying self, taking up your cross, and following the Lamb wherever He leads. In other words, letting go of all preoccupation with self: our comfort, our pleasure, our agenda, our popularity, our ability to gain the world's approval, even our own dreams and desires. And, as Paul did, treating all those things as rubbish for the excellence of the knowledge of Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3:7-9). "
― Leslie Ludy
16 " Do not think, Oh, that I were delivered from all these afflictions and troubles here in this world! If you were, then you would have more ease yourself, but this is a way of honoring God, and manifesting the excellence of grace here, when you are in this conflict of temptation, which God shall not have from you in Heaven. "
― Jeremiah Burroughs
17 " To be faithful to your instincts and the impulses that carry you in the direction of the excellence you most desire and value ... surely that is to lead the noble life. "
18 " Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters. "