A task can only be as exalted or as petty as the ... mechanics of virtue quote 340

340 

A task can only be as exalted or as petty as the goal which it serves. Thus, the problem would not be the pettiness of any expenditure but of the goal upon which one squandered one's potential. Thus, if confronted with a task too petty to undertake, one should not regret the expenditure so much as appreciate this aid in correcting one's aim. 

Raising the aim, one also raises the value of all that is necessary to the fulfillment of that aim. From this perspective, there are no petty expenditures, only petty aims. The threshold of one's intellect limits the height of one's aim, creating the illusion that what is one's own highest aim is the highest aim available. Now, even an atrocity is redeemable, if it serves one's highest possible aim. But to the precise degree that one justifies the atrocity, one also measures one's highest possible aim, which would in all likelihood also be a measurement of one's stupidity.

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