Daily Inspiration Quote by Joseph Butler

Butler is doing something sly here: he makes selfishness sound less like a moral scandal and more like a predictable glitch in human machinery. “Consequently” signals he’s mid-argument, not delivering a pulpit thunderbolt. He’s tracing a chain of causes: given the way desire works, it will “often happen” that we want particular things even when the price tag is “manifest injury to others.” The phrasing drains the drama from vice. No villains twirling mustaches, just ordinary people following appetites to their natural (and dangerous) endpoint.

The intent is diagnostic. As an 18th-century Anglican moralist, Butler is resisting two popular temptations at once: the cynic’s claim that humans are nothing but self-interest, and the sentimentalist’s belief that moral feeling will automatically keep us decent. He grants the hard fact: our wants can aim at “particular objects” with tunnel vision, and the harm to others can be obvious, not accidental. “Manifest” matters. This is not about unintended consequences; it’s about knowingly stepping over someone because the object feels urgent.

The subtext is a warning against moral laziness: if desire can coexist with clear awareness of harm, then ethics can’t be outsourced to feelings alone. You need discipline, reflection, social restraint - a structure strong enough to counteract cravings that are perfectly “natural” yet socially corrosive. In Butler’s world, moral life isn’t the absence of desire; it’s the management of desire before it turns predatory.