Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury Quotes

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The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of the face; true proportions, the beauty of architecture; true measures, the beauty of harmony and music....

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Wit is its own remedy. Liberty and commerce bring it to its true standard. The only danger is the laying an embargo. The same thing happens here as in the case of trade: impositions and restrictions reduce it to a low ebb; nothing is so advantageous to it as a free port.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
If we are told a man is religious we still ask what are his morals? But if we hear at first that he has honest morals, and is a man of natural justice and good temper, we seldom think of the other question, whether he be religious and devout.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Pedantry and bigotry are millstones, able to sink the best book which carries the least part of their dead weight. The temper of the pedagogue suits not with the age; and the world, however it may be taught, will not be tutored.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
As many as are the difficulties which Virtue has to encounter in this world, her force is yet superior.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance. The appearance of reality is necessary to make any passion agreeably represented, and to be able to move others we must be moved ourselves, or at least seem to be so, upon some probable grounds.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Remember that there is nothing in God but what is godlike; and that He is either not at all, or truly and perfectly good.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
The greatest of fools is he who imposes on himself, and in his greatest concern thinks certainly he knows that which he has least studied, and of which he is most profoundly ignorant.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
They who are great talkers in company have never been any talkers by themselves, nor used to private discussions of our home regimen.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
The passion of fear (as a modern philosopher informs me) determines the spirits of the muscles of the knees, which are instantly ready to perform their motion, by taking up the legs with incomparable celerity, in order to remove the body out of harm's way.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Never did any soul do good but it came readier to do the same again, with more enjoyment. Never was love or gratitude or bounty practiced but with increasing joy, which made the practicer still more in love with the fair act.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury