Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.
William PennRead
God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.
Interpretation
Resisting evil is more meaningful than simply praying about it.
William Penn highlights the importance of action over ritualistic behavior. He suggests that when individuals choose to resist temptation and act morally, they are serving a higher purpose more effectively than by merely performing prayers or religious rites without true commitment to virtue.
In practice
During a discussion on ethical decision-making, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of personal integrity.
Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.
Where thou art Obliged to speak, be sure speak the Truth: For Equivocation is half way to Lying, as Lying, the whole way to Hell.
Man, being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts; since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public, and his own present and future benefit in all respects.
Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.
To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.
Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.
In the chapel you prayed to be a saint and now I will make you a god.
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.
It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
When God wants to drive a person insane, he grants that person's every wish.
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