Quotes About Virtue

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbor to have them through envy.

Excellence is not an act, but habit.

we cannot be prudent without being good.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Virtue lies in moderation

The ideal man, takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it.

The best kind of friendship, he maintains, is friendship with those to whom we wish well and with whom we can spend time in shared valuable activities, all because of their virtue.

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

No debemos, a pesar de no ser más que hombres, limitarnos, como quieren algunos, a los conocimientos y sentimientos puramente humanos: ni reducirnos, mortales como somos, a una condición mortal; es preciso, por lo contrario, que en cuanto de nosotros dependa nos desatemos de los lazos de la condición mortal, y hagamos lo posible por vivir conforme a lo mejor que hay en nosotros.

Whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.

The proud man, then, is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a mean in respect of the rightness of them; for he claims what is accordance with his merits, while the others go to excess or fall short.

To feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it, hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

existence is to all men a thing to be chosen and loved, and that we exist by virtue of activity (i.e. by living and acting), and that the handiwork is in a sense, the producer in activity; he loves his handiwork, therefore, because he loves existence.

The megalopsychos cannot let anyone else, except a friend, determine his life. For that would be slavish; and this is why all flatterers are servile and inferior people are flatterers.

Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus' phrase', but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder;

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of

If there are several virtues the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life, living well and 'beautifully'.

Muchos hombres se abstienen de hacer y, conformándose con sólo tratar las teorías, creen que son filósofos y que por esta vía seran virtuosos. A éstos les ocurre lo mismo que a los enfermos que escuchan con atención al médico, pero que luego no hacen nada de lo que les prescriben.

For liberality resides not in the multitude of the gifts but in the state of character of the giver.

What then is a moral virtue, the result of such a process duly directed? It is no mere mood of feeling, no mere liability to emotion, no mere natural aptitude or endowment, it is a permanent state of the agent's self, or, as we might in modern phrase put it, of his will, it consists in a steady self-imposed obedience to a rule of action in certain situations which frequently recur in human life.