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Piety Quotations

Opposition to vice does not always imply pursuit of virtue

G.K. Chesterton, Chaucer

But what the medievals meant, by thus dividing and labeling the vices, was that a man might fall into one of these vices even when fleeing too far from another. A man who neglects his business may fall into sloth; a man who pursues his business may fall into avarice. And what the wreckers of the medieval system really did, practically and in the long run, was to let loose some of the vices on the excuse of exterminating the others. After the Renaissance, the Pagans went in for unlimited lust and the Puritans for unlimited avarice; on the excuse that at least neither of them was being guilty of sloth.

Note that unlimited avarice is a defection from Puritanism, not a tenet of it.

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