Joseph Butler - Fifteen sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726)

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Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Joseph Butler
Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.

Joseph Butler
God Almighty is, to be sure, unmoved by passion or appetite, unchanged by affection; but then it is to be added that He neither sees nor hears nor perceives things by any senses like ours; but in a manner infinitely more perfect.

Joseph Butler
Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food

Joseph Butler
The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else.

Joseph Butler
As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

Joseph Butler
Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.

Joseph Butler
For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

Joseph Butler
Remember likewise there are persons who love fewer words, an inoffensive sort of people, and who deserve some regard, though of too still and composed tempers for you.

Joseph Butler
Thus there is no doubt the eye was intended for us to see with.

Joseph Butler
In all common ordinary cases, we see intuitively at first view what is out duty, what is the honest part. This is the ground of the observation, that the first thought is often the best. In these cases, doubt and deliberation is itself dishonesty; as it was in Balaam upon the second message.

Joseph Butler
The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity, and with respect only to the present world, is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.

Joseph Butler
Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.

Joseph Butler
Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it.

Joseph Butler
The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.

Joseph Butler
The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone; therefore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of.

Joseph Butler
Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.

Joseph Butler
Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

Joseph Butler