Daily Inspiration Quote by Elias Hicks

Hicks lands the punch gently: the real danger isn’t desire itself, but its endless adaptability. “Great variety” sounds almost cheerful, like a catalog of options. In a Quaker preacher’s mouth, it’s a warning disguised as plain observation. He’s pointing at the mind’s talent for self-justification: if you want something badly enough, you can always find a method, a rationale, even a moral cover for getting it.

The line works because it refuses to name the desires. That vagueness is strategic. By not specifying sex, money, status, comfort, revenge, Hicks forces the listener to supply their own example. The target becomes internal, not a public list of sins. It’s an early psychological critique dressed in religious language: conscience isn’t defeated by one big temptation, but by a thousand small workarounds.

Context matters. Hicks, a prominent Quaker minister in the early American republic, preached in a culture that was commercializing fast and growing confident about individual freedom. His tradition prized “plainness” and inward discipline, suspicious of theatrical piety and external credentials. So “variety” is also a cultural critique: the modern world multiplies opportunities to indulge, and the self will happily turn that abundance into permission.

Subtext: stop blaming the world or the devil. The engine is closer. Desire doesn’t just tempt; it innovates. The moral test is whether you can recognize your own cleverness before it masquerades as necessity, rights, or even virtue.