Even if the truth exposes our life, it is still better to acknowledge the truth than to conceal it: our life can change, but the truth will always remain true and will not stop exposing us.
We should live the way we would if everyone could always see us. Our thoughts should be such that we would have if the innermost corners of our soul were accessible to anyone’s gaze. Why should we hide anything from others? It is impossible to hide anything from God. All divine and human teaching comes down to a single truth: we are all limbs of a single great body. Nature united us into one family, and we have all been created so that we could live together by helping each other.
— After Seneca
The Christian revelation taught us that all people are equal, that God is Father and that other people are brothers. It struck at the heart of that terrible violence that was suffocating the civilized world; it broke the chains of the slaves and destroyed the great falsehood that allowed a small group of people to lead lives of luxury at the expense of the masses, depriving the laborers of the fruits of their labor. That is why the first Christianity was persecuted, and that is why the ruling classes had accepted it and corrupted it when it became clear that it cannot be destroyed. In its triumph it ceased being the true Christianity of the early days and became a servant of the rich.
— After Henry George
Your brother by birth—by which I mean spiritual birth—is starving, and you are languishing from overindulgence. Your brother walks naked, and you have clothes made for your clothes to protect them from moths. Would it not be much better to use them to cover the bodies of the poor? That way the clothes would remain intact, and you would be free from extra worries. For if you do not want your clothes to be eaten by moths, give them to the poor: they know how to shake them out well. Even if the people intoxicated by wealth shut their ears to my words, those who live in poverty will take note of them. But how, you might ask, does this relate to the poor? After all, they have neither gold, nor many clothes. But they have bread and cold water and the legs to visit the sick; they have a tongue and the words to console the unfortunate; a roof over their heads to shelter a stranger.
— John Chrysostom
For the failure of all good people nowadays is that, associating politely with wicked persons, countenancing them in their wickedness, and often joining in it, they think to avert its consequences by collaterally labouring to repair the ruin it has caused; and while, in the morning, they satisfy their hearts by ministering to the wants of two or three destitute persons, in the evening they dine with, envy, and prepare themselves to follow the example of, the rich speculator who has caused the destitution of two or three thousand. They are thus destroying more in hours than they can amend in years; or, at the best, vainly feeding the famine-struck populations, in the rear of a devouring army, always on the increase in mass of numbers, and rapidity of march.
— John Ruskin
You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the “position in which Providence has placed him.” That’s modern Christianity. You say—“We did not knock him into the ditch.” How do you know what you have done, or are doing? That’s just what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know, until the question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing.
— John Ruskin
If the truth does not tell us what we should do, then it will always tell us what we should not do or what we should stop doing.
