Quotes About Virtue

I see good people dying of cold and hunger.' Well, don't you see wicked people dying of luxury, pride and excess?

If you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one, until it is wiped out altogether.

True instruction is this:--to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole.

If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.

So – a true philosopher is under no obligation to respect vulgar opinion as to what is religious or irreligious, what is just or unjust. What dishonour he brings on philosophers in general if he did! That's not what you learned here.

Whatever is enough is abundant in the eyes of virtue.

It's a living soul I want one of you to show me, the soul of a person willing to work with, and never criticize, either God or a fellow human being. One who will never fail, or have experiences he does not want; who will never give in to anger, jealousy or the desire to dominate others.

I will define him simply as someone set on becoming a god rather than a man.

Whenever externals are more important to you than your own integrity, then be prepared to serve them the remainder of your life.

I have a bad neighbour – bad, that is, for himself. For me, though, he is good: he exercises my powers of fairness and sociability.

Do you think freedom is something good?' 'The greatest good of all.' 'Can anyone in possession of the greatest good be unhappy or unfortunate?' 'No.

only judge your own thoughts, desires, and actions as good or evil.

But prove to me that one who holds inferior judgments can prevail over a man who is superior in his judgments. You never will prove it, nor anything like it; for the law of nature and of god is this: Let the better always be superior to the worse… Thus I, too, lost my lamp to a thief because the thief was better at keeping awake than I. But he bought a lamp at the price of being a thief, a rogue, and a brute. That seemed to him a good bargain. Epictetus

If anything except the honourable is good, we shall be hounded by greed for life, and by greed for the things which provide life with its furnishings, – an intolerable state, subject to no limits, unstable. The only good, therefore, is that which is honourable, that which is subject to bounds.

What's odd in asserting that what's bad for anything is what runs contrary to its nature? You say it for everything else, why make humanity the sole exception?

Pidä silmiesi edessä joka päivä kuolema ja maanpako ja kaikki kauheana näyttäytyvä, ennen kaikkea kuolema. Silloin et koskaan ajattele mitään matalamielistä etkä himoitse mitään likaa.

Act in this way regarding spouses, children, honors, offices, and wealth, and you will become worthy to feast with the gods. More than this—if you abstain from the rich desserts that come your way, passing them on to others, you will become worthy to rule with the gods. This was the way of Diogenes and Heraclitus, and they are now venerated as divine.

None of those who have been raised to a loftier height by riches and honours is really great.

the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.

ask yourself how Socrates or Zeno

If reason tells you a pleasure is wholesome and harmless, you may enjoy it in moderation. But take care not to let your happiness gradually become dependent on it.

Since I can get greatness of soul and nobility from myself, why should I look to get a farm, or money, or some office, from you? I will not be so insensible of what I already own.

At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next every two, next every three days! and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the Gods in thanksgiving.

But they have produced such wonderful fruit in a human mind, as part of their plan to bestow on humanity the true secret of happiness.