Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.
Interpretation
Public practices significantly influence individual moral habits more than personal failings affect society as a whole.
This quote highlights the profound impact that collective public practices have on shaping the moral character of individuals. It suggests that positive habits cultivated through societal norms can permeate personal lives more swiftly than the negative behaviors of individuals can corrupt the broader community.
In practice
During a discussion on ethics in society, I might bring up this quote to emphasize the importance of positive public norms.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
On the one hand, faith is a profoundly personal contact with God, which touches me in my innermost being and places me in front of the living God in absolute immediacy in such a way that I can speak with Him, love Him, and enter into communion with Him.
Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.
The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.
Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.
If the work of our sanctification presents us with difficulties that appear insurmountable, it is because we do not look at it in the right way. In reality, holiness consists in one thing alone, namely, fidelity to God's plan. And this fidelity is equally within everyone's capacity in both its active and passive exercise.
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