Anthony Ashley Cooper, PC, known as Anthony Ashley Cooper from 1621 to 1630, as Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Baronet from 1630 to 1661, and as The Lord Ashley from 1661 to 1672, was a prominent English politician during the Interregnum and during the reign of King Charles II. A founder of the Whig party, he is also remembered as the patron of John Locke.
Source: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
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, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Understanding
The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth; for all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and music. In poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfection.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Winning, Beauty, Poetry, Truth, Success
Gravity is the very essence of imposture; it not only mistakes other things, but is apt perpetually to mistake itself.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self-examiner.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Thought, Self-Discovery
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 practised but with increasing joy, which made the practiser still more in love with the fair act.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Benevolence, Goodness
The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just, and amiable, perfect the character of the gentleman and the philosopher. And the study of such a taste or relish will be ever the great employment and concern of him who covets as well to be wise and good as agreeable and polite.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
It was the saying of an ancient sage that humor was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject that would not bear raillery was suspicious, and a jest that would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Humor
To philosophize in a just sense, is but to carry good breeding a step higher. For the accomplishment of breeding is, to learn what is decent in company or beautiful in arts; and the sum of philosophy is to learn what is just in society, and beautiful in nature and the order of the world.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Philosophy
When men are easy in themselves, they let others remain so.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Happiness
The one and only formative power given to man Is thought. By his thinking he not only makes character, but body and affairs, for “as he thinketh within himself, so is he.” Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Prejudice
As a malicious censure, carefully worded and pronounced with assurance, is apt to pass with mankind for shrewd wit, so a virulent maxim in bold expressions, though without any justness of thought, is readily received for true philosophy.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
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.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Truth
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, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Virtue
Temper, if ungoverned, governs the whole man.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Temper
It is not a head merely, but a heart and resolution, which complete the real philosopher.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Philosophy
A man is by nothing so much himself, as by his temper and the character of his passions and affections. If he loses what is manly and worthy in these, he is as much lost to himself, as when he loses his memory and understanding.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Passion
Pleasure and pain, beauty and deformity, good and ill, seemed to me everywhere interwoven; and one with another made a pretty mixture, agreeable enough in the main. ‘Twas the same, I fancied, as in some of those rich stuffs where the flowers and ground were oddly put together, with such irregular work and contrary colors, as looked ill in the pattern, but natural and well in the piece.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Pleasure
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, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Money, Nature
Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Liberty
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, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Honesty
Pedantry and bigotry are millstones, able to sink the best book which carries the least part of their dead weight. The temper of the pedagogue suits not with the age; and the world, however it may be taught, will not be tutored.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
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, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Temper
To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as it lies in our power, is the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Goodness
True courage is cool and calm.—The bravest of men have the least of a brutal, bullying insolence, and in the very time of danger are found the most serene and free.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Bravery, Courage
Of all the adult male criminals in London, not two in a hundred have entered upon a course of crime who have lived an honest life up to the age of twenty.—Almost all who enter on a course of crime do so between the ages of eight and sixteen.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Crime
The greatest of fools is he who imposes on himself, and in his greatest concerns thinks he knows that which he has least studied, and of which he is profoundly ignorant.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
Topics: Fools
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