Quotes About Virtue

she apprehended the rare purity of accomplishment which brought no personal gain.

Character is who you are when nobody else is watching," he wrote in one of his books—the undeniable, hokey truth.

La excelencia moral es resultado del hábito. Nos volvemos justos realizando actos de justicia; templados, realizando actos de templanza; valientes, realizando actos de valentía.

Mutlu kiÅŸi hayat?n getirdiklerine göre bir mutlu bir mutsuz olan kiÅŸi deÄŸil, yaÅŸam boyu erdemli davranan talihin cilvelerine onurlu bir ÅŸekilde katlanan ve elindekileriyle en iyi ÅŸekilde davranan kiÅŸidir.

Das Ziel des Weisen ist nicht Glück zu erlangen, sondern Unglück zu vermeiden.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement....

We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...

Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

Even in adversity, nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.

Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.

We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.

Moral experience—the actual possession and exercise of good character—is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them.

The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean.