War & Peace Quote by Hosea Ballou

Suspicion looks like moral seriousness, but Ballou is calling it a counterfeit virtue: a posture that feels protective and principled while quietly corroding the very character it claims to defend. His first move is almost statistical. Suspicion is "far more" likely to miss the mark than hit it, not because people are saints, but because the suspicious mind is a lousy instrument - it interprets fragments as proofs and treats anxiety as evidence. By framing suspicion as usually "unjust", Ballou shifts the burden: the moral risk isn’t naivete, it’s the casual readiness to accuse.

The subtext is theological and social. As a clergyman in an early American culture steeped in surveillance of private conduct, Ballou pushes back against a common religious reflex: policing others as a stand-in for self-discipline. Suspicion, he implies, doesn’t build virtue; it rehearses suspicion's own habits - pride, cynicism, and the thrill of being the one who "sees through" people. That’s why it’s "no friend to virtue". It breeds a temperament that prefers exposure to repair.

Then comes the cleanest twist: "always an enemy to happiness". Not occasionally, not in excess - always. Ballou understands suspicion as a lifestyle of preemptive betrayal. Even when correct, it offers no peace, only confirmation that the world is as unsafe as you feared. The line reads like pastoral counsel with a political edge: communities cannot cohere when everyone is auditioning everyone else for guilt.