James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
J. C. Sharp
Private self-regard must have been wholly subordinated to, if not entirely cast out by, a higher principle of action and a purer affection before a man can become either truly moral or religious.
Self-love may be, and as a fact often is, the first impulse that drives a man to seek to become morally and religiously better.
The abandoning of some lower end in obedience to a higher aim is often made the very condition of securing the lower one.
The aim of all morality, truly conceived, is to furnish men with a standard of action and a motive to work by, which shall not intensify each man’s selfishness, but raise him ever more and more above it.
The essence of all immorality, of sin, is the making self the centre to which we subordinate all other beings and interests.
The pleasure-seeker is not the pleasure-finder; those are the happiest men who think least about happiness.
There is a measure of self-regard which is right, wherein the individual self is identified with the universal self.
This is the first condition of a living morality as well as of vital religion, that the soul shall find a true centre out from and above itself, round which it shall revolve.
Water cannot rise above the level from which it springs; no more can moral theories.