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A right mind and generous affection hath more beauty and charms than all other symmetries in the world besides and a grain of honesty and native worth is of more value than all the adventitious ornaments, estates, or preferments for the sake of which some of the better sort so oft turn knaves.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Age: 84 †
Born: 1801
Born: April 28
Died: 1885
Died: October 1
Politician
Statistician
London
England
Mind
Worth
Hath
World
Turn
Charm
Knaves
Sort
Native
Charms
Beauty
Generous
Symmetry
Turns
Affection
Ornaments
Values
Honesty
Estates
Better
Sake
Besides
Right
Value
Grain

More quotes by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

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It is the same with understanding as with eyes to a certain size and make, just so much light is necessary, and no more. Whatever is beyond brings darkness and confusion.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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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
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No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense and to receive advice was little better than tamely to another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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It is not wit merely, but temper, which must form the well-bred man. In the same manner it is not a head merely, but a heart and resolution, which must complete the real philosopher.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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Temper, if ungoverned, governs the whole man.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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Men of sense are really all of one religion. But men of sense never tell what it is.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self examiner.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it as I would be clean for my own sake, though nobody were to see me.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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The heart is never neutral.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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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
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In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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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
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Through certain humors or passions, and from temper merely, a man may be completely miserable, let his outward circumstances be ever so fortunate.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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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
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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
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When men are easy in themselves, they let others remain so.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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We may have an excellent ear for music, without being able to perform in any kind we may judge well of poetry, without being poets, or possessing the least of a poetic vein but we can have no tolerable notion of goodness without being tolerably good.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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Tis the strumpet's plague To beguile many, and be beguiled by one.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
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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