Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True gracefulness stems from genuine goodness and character.
This quote highlights the connection between gracefulness and goodness, suggesting that to be truly graceful is to embody virtuous qualities. It implies that external elegance and charm must be rooted in deeper moral integrity, as superficial grace without goodness lacks authenticity.
Themes
GracefulnessGoodnessCharacterVirtueIntegrity
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a speech on personal values.
More from Samuel Butler
All quotes βTo know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel ButlerRead
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel ButlerRead
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel ButlerRead
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel ButlerRead
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel ButlerRead
Similar quotes
As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs.
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No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
Alan WattsRead
A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.
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If there's anything you absolutely hate, why, it must be unconstitutional. Or, if there's anything you absolutely have to have, it must be required by the Constitution. That's where we are. That is utterly mindless.
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The State lives by its very existence on the two-fold and pervasive employment of aggressive violence against the very liberty and property of individuals that it is supposed to be defending.
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Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
ZhuangziRead