Benjamin Whichcote Quotes

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

The last thing I want is for people to go through the motions in life. We're all meant to do different things, but there's a lot of opportunity for us to do some great things.

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurdity. And really my life—a life of indulgence of desires—was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil and an absurdity,” referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

The end of culture is right living

If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you're spending today?

Only those live who do good.

If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.

Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.

At the end of your days, you will be judged by your gallop, not by your stumble.

No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.

We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.

When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'

To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is the perfection of character.

He preaches well that lives well – that's all the divinity I can understand.

You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

What you have to decide... is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So dont be afraid. Be alive.

Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.

I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council, and her Treasury, Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till sad the breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent. Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honoured Margaret.

If your life lease, your existence was canceled tomorrow, what would you wish you had done? What are the things you would like to impact? Start on those and you can change the world. Maybe you can only make your neighborhood a little bit better, or make someone's life a little bit better. Isn't that the kind of purpose?

In the end, we'll all become stories.