Our souls must become expanded by the contemplation of Nature's grandeur, before we can fully comprehend the greatness of man.
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
Let the standard of everybody's mind be raised to the heights of his own inner glory and then man will feel for himself the greatness of the higher values of life and would be tempted to bring them down into practical life and live them.
If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
What a vile and abject thing is man if he do not raise himself above humanity.
Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.
He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.
Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?
Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.
Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.
Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.
I desire to see the time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry shall become much more general than at present.
Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
To act well in this world, one must sacrifice all personal desires. The people who become missionaries of religious thought have no other Fatherland than this thought. Man is not on Earth merely to be happy, nor even simply to be honest. He is here to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility, and to surmount the vulgarity of nearly every individual.
Righteousness alone can exalt them [America] as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others.
It's either vilification or sanctification, and both piss me off.
All moral elevation consists first and foremost of being weaned from the momentary.
The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.
Under the sacred and compelling trust we have as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, ours is a work of redemption, of lifting and saving those who need help. Ours is a task of raising the sights of those of our people who fail to realize the great potential that lies within them.
If I had in me something that inspires people towards the good and raises them one step on the ladder of mental and spiritual progress, I want to show it by example, indication, and deduction, not by preaching, threatening, and conspiring.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ can make bad men good and good men better, can alter human nature, and can change human lives.
By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?" What more valuable for the elevation of our own character?
That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.
In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
One should arrive at leading one's conscience to a state of development so that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self, of which the ordinary self is a servant.
