Julius Charles Hare quotes:
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Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.
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The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and retains the longest, are black ones.
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A weak mind sinks under prosperity, as well as under adversity.
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Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself.
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The virtue of Christianity is obedience.
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Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!
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The next best thing to a very good joke is a very bad one.
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To no kind of begging are people so averse, as to begging pardon; that is, when there is any serious ground for doing so.
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Few people have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. Most people confuse greatness with power, despite the fact that greatness has nothing to do with power.
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True goodness is like the glow-worm in this, that it shines most when no eyes except those of heaven are upon it.
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Many people make their own God; and he is much what the French may mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,--very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone.
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By the ancients, courage was regarded as practically the main part of virtue; by us, though I hope we are not less brave, purity is so regarded now.
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What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.
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The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.
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If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.
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Everybody has his own theater, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwrite, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.