As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.
Joseph Butler

Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.
Joseph Butler

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.
Joseph Butler

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
Joseph Butler

Consequently it will often happen there will be a desire of particular objects, in cases where they cannot be obtained without manifest injury to others.
Joseph Butler

Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.
Joseph Butler

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.
Joseph Butler

Every one of our passions and affections hath its natural stint and bound, which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree.
Joseph Butler

For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
Joseph Butler

God Almighty is, to be sure, unmoved by passion or appetite, unchanged by affection; but then it is to be added that He neither sees nor hears nor perceives things by any senses like ours; but in a manner infinitely more perfect.
Joseph Butler


Happiness does not consist in self-love.
Joseph Butler

Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.
Joseph Butler

However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
Joseph Butler

Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.
Joseph Butler

Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.
Joseph Butler

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.
Joseph Butler

People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable.
Joseph Butler

Remember likewise there are persons who love fewer words, an inoffensive sort of people, and who deserve some regard, though of too still and composed tempers for you.
Joseph Butler

Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it.
Joseph Butler

The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written.
Joseph Butler