quotations about piety
True piety is like the vestal fire, which was intended to burn day and night, and never to go out, and which never did go out so long as they remembered to replenish it day by day.
JAMES HAMILTON
The Mount of Olives and Other Lectures on Prayer
The gods know what sort of person every one really is; they take notice with what feelings and with what piety he attends to his religious duties, and are sure to make a distinction between the good and the wicked.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercised in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of the mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of the mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values in life. What one thinks of here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. "Man is perfectly human," said Schiller, "only when he plays." And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Veblen spoke often of the intellectual faculty as "idle curiosity"--but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas.
RICHARD HOFSTADTER
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
No happiness or solid comfort can be found in this vale of tears, like living a pious life.
WILLIAM MOMPESSON
letter, September 1, 1666
Piety consists in worshipping the ancestral gods according to ancestral customs. This may be true, but piety is supposed to be a virtue. It is supposed to be a good. But is it truly good? Is worshipping gods according to ancestral custom good?
LEO STRAUSS
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism
It is easier to profess piety than practice it.
MARSILIUS FICINUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Practical piety may be defined as living not according to self-will, impulse, passion, or temptation, but it is living according to God's rules.
J. STOUGHTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Piety is the realization and verification of the transcendent in human life.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion
In periods that are wanting in inspiration piety always assumes the character of caution. It degenerates from a free and joyful devotion to a melancholy and anxious slavery.
J. H. SEELYE
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.
RICHARD M. WEAVER
Ideas Have Consequences
The pleasures of piety are infinitely more exquisite than those of fashion and of sensual pursuits. They consist in one even tenor of mind, a lightness of heart and sober cheerfulness which none but those who have experienced can conceive; but they leave no sting behind them; they give pleasure on reflection, and will soothe the mind in the distant prospect. And who can say this of the world or its enjoyments?
HENRY KIRKE WHITE
Poetical Works and Remains