Quotes About Virtue

He could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse

it's better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.

If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.

On the virtuous man] He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.

Physical excellence does not of itself produce a good mind and character: on the other hand, excellence of mind and character will make the best of the physique it is given.

the most important thing is not life, but the good life.

virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.

both wealth and concord decline as possessions become pursued and honored. And virtue perishes with them as well.

The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.

The evil never attains to any real friendship, either with good or evil.

And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?

For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will.

the creative soul creates not children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue

For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.

Are not they temperate from a kind of intemperance?

It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.

this is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others

if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his action, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting life a good or a bad man.

So I spoke the truth when I said that neither I nor you nor any other man would rather do injustice than suffer it: for it is worse.

There is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body.

It's not from money that excellence comes, but from excellence money and the other things, all of them, come to be good for human beings, whether in private or in public life.

no man should be angry at what is true. But those who love the truth in each thing are to be called lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion. Assuredly.