John Locke Quotes

Children may be born angels, but with all the temptations out there in the world, it takes work to try to keep them that way.

Although children are good and well born, vice will blight them if they are not well educated.

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

Fathers are so necessary as examples and guides for our children in wisdom and virtue. Without father figures, young people often feel orphaned; left adrift at a critical moment in their growth and development.

There are no temptations from which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and subdued.

It is almost impossible for children and youth to find their way through the seas of life without the guiding light of a good example.

No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.

You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.

I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

It depends on education--that holder of the keys which the Almighty hath put into our hands--to open the gates which lead to virtue or to vice, to happiness or misery.

Blessed is he who has never been tempted; for he knows not the frailty of his rectitude.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

My father, to whom I owe so much, never told me the difference between right and wrong; now I think that's why I remain so greatly in his debt.

My soul, never laugh at sin's fooleries, lest thou come to smile at sin itself. It is thine enemy, and thy Lord's enemy.

Follow in the footsteps of your fathers' virtue! How could you hope to climb high unless your fathers' will climbs with you?

Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son's teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books...But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside, it says. Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.

Goodness shapes our will, and truth shapes our understanding.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.

I know of no better answer to the foul practices that confront our young people than the teachings of a mother, given in love with an unmistakable warning.

Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith - It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner.

Be very vigilant over thy child in the April of his understanding, lest the frost of May nip his blossoms. While he is a tender twig, straighten him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such commonly shall thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience and his second shall be what thou wilt.

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of virtuous living.