Joseph Butler Quotes

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.

As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

That which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our hopes and fears which are of any consideration; I mean a Future Life.