Moral perfection is unattainable, but the movement towards it is the law of human life.
A moral law does not exist if I cannot fulfill it. People say: we are born egotists, miserly and lustful, and we cannot be any other way.
No, we can. Our first task is to feel with our heart what it is that we must be. And this feeling will give us strength.
— Salter
You are free agents, and you can sense it. All the possible sophisms of that pitiful philosophy, which attempts to counter the loud voice of human conscience and human consciousness with fatalistic teachings, lacked the power to silence the two incorruptible witnesses of human freedom: pangs of guilt and the greatness of martyrdom. From Socrates to Christ, and from Christ right up to the people who from one century to the next sacrifice their lives for truth, all the martyrs of faith protest against this slavish teaching and loudly tell us: “We too loved life and all the people that made our life beautiful, the people who begged us to end our struggle. Our every heartbeat loudly appealed to us: live! But in order to fulfill our duty we chose death.” And from Cain right up to the most pitiful spy of our days, all betrayers and traitors, having chosen the path of evil, hear in the depth of their soul the voice of judgement and reproach, a voice that gives them no respite, a voice forever repeating: “Why did you turn away from the true path? You are free agents and, consequently, you are responsible for your actions.”
— Giuseppe Mazzini
If thou ask again, therefore, What is to be done? allow me to reply: By thee, for the present, almost nothing. Thou there, the thing for thee to do is, if possible, to cease to be a hollow sounding-shell of hearsays, egoisms, purblind dilettantisms; and become, were it on the infinitely small scale, a faithful discerning soul. Thou shalt descend into thy inner man, and see if there be any traces of a soul there; till then there can be nothing done! O brother, we must if possible resuscitate some soul and conscience in us, exchange our dilettantisms for sincerities, our dead hearts of stone for living hearts of flesh. Then shall we discern, not one thing, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a whole endless host of things that can be done. Do the first of these; do it; the second will already have become clearer, doabler; the second, third and three-thousandth will then have begun to be possible for us.
— Carlyle
A man dropped a precious pearl into the sea and, in order to retrieve it, began scooping water with a bucket. The spirit of the sea appeared and asked him: “Are you going to stop any time soon?” The man replied: “When I drain the sea and get my pearl back.” The spirit of the sea brought him his pearl.
External consequences are not under our control, but it is always possible to make an effort, and effort is always accompanied by beneficial inner consequences.
