#principles

The stops point out, with truth, the time of pause A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause. t ev'ry comma, stop while one you count; At semicolon, two is the amount; A colon doth require the time of three; The period four, as learned men agree. ↗

— Cecil Hartley

#men

The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible...Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous, except for a brief moment of unbalanced provincialism in which we may laugh at the merely unfamiliar. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#humor #irony #morality #principles #writing

There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for. ↗

— Albert Camus

#pacifism #principles #war #die

Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#principles #truth #love

In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#budo #do #efficiency #flowers #ikebana

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any moan, however much we have suffered from him. ↗

— Socrates

#injustice

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#doctrine #ethics #law #morality #principles

Life is indeed terribly complicated—to a man who has lost his principles. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#simplicity #life

Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas. ↗

— Eric Bentley

#bright #genuine #ideas #instead #jargon

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. ↗

— Mark Twain

#except #force #principles #real #well-fed