How to Be a Failure
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
— Bill Cosby
The Interplay of Character and Reputation
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
— Abraham Lincoln
Truthfulness Banishes Stress
You should always tell the truth, because, if you tell the truth, you make it the other person’s problem….
— Sean Connery
On Death
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
— Epicurus
Perfect Beauty Isn’t
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
— Sir Francis Bacon
Motives Matter
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
— T. S. Eliot
The Moral Imperative
If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?
— The Bible (KJV), Proverbs 24:11
—–An Alternate, Modern Translation —–
Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?
— The Bible (NIV), Proverbs 24:11
Comfort for the Hurting
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows them that trust in Him.
— The Bible, Nahum 1:7
On Euthanasia
The claimed justification for euthanasia first takes the moral high ground of compassion. When a truer form of compassion is found in palliative care, the ground shifts to an appeal to human rights, especially to the sovereignty of self-determination.
— Luke Gormally
Evil Can Deceive Us
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.
— Simone Weil