Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
I'm lucky enough and wealthy enough to be able to buy photographs and buy art that inspires me from day to day. I don't want a Picasso on my wall; it's great art, but it's dead art to me. I'd rather have a photograph by someone I've never heard of th...
When I go to galleries in New York, I feel like I'm in school. I know that there's good contemporary conceptual art, but I have a really hard time caring about it. I'd rather look at images of people and things I can relate to. Then again, I didn't g...
Too often, our concept of pastors and church leaders reinforces rather than obliterates the sad state of family life in our current context.
Man created god upon his thoughts to externalize, to give form to his belief to give a reason for what they could do. The gods stole away the energies, let man believe he was ruled rather than that he rules.
Ability to laugh at evil, to relativize symbols without dismissing them is usually a sign of a rather healthy person. Puritans and reformers can never laugh.
I don't believe Old Nick can be so very ugly,' said Aunt Jamesina reflectively. 'He wouldn't do so much harm if he was. I always think of him as a rather handsome gentleman.
The secret is not just to be stunning, which I find comes rather easily, to be honest. The tricky thing is getting exactly the right level of stun for the occasion.
Vyck had often encouraged him to engage an opponent's mind rather than its weapons. often this advice was accompanied by the casual remark that if he couldn't outwit a fox he shouldn't be in the woods.
Potter is mocked by a faculty member for the idea that there is evil in the world from which even children need to learn to defend themselves by the actual practice of doing so rather than familiarity with theory.
I am not writing this book for people below the age of 18, but I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them.
A hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on," Malcolm pointed out. "Do you have any ideas about how we're going to handle that task?" "Simple," Halt told him. "We'll surround them.
Will you excuse us all,” [Jeff] said, “if we admit that we find it hard to believe? There is no such-possibility-in the rest of the world.” Have you no kind of life where [asexual reproduction] is possible?” asked Zava. “Why, yes-some low f...
That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand.
He plays the same game, but for the first time in his life he is truly playing, rather than working, being a human, and this is a vast distinction realized by few.
A life of joy awaits the man who sits alone quietly in a room and determines what he himself believes rather than simply adopting the values of another.
Evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek — why, for example, people would rather make love with an attractive partner than get a slap on the belly with a wet fish.
Forgiveness of sins is great, but I'd rather have the ability to quit doing the things I keep needing forgiveness for.
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.
The gospels, never meant to report, but rather to convince, are in no sense objective and dispassionate biographies. They are glowing accounts meant to persuade people of the writers’ convictions.
