A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues.
It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
In society one needs a flexible virtue; too much goodness can be blamable.
He was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.
A certain alloy of expediency improves the gold of morality and makes it wear all the longer.
