Quotes about Virtue

Life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasantest, since this, more than anything else, constitutes humanity.

By the way, a question is sometimes raised, whether the moral choice or the actions have most to do with Virtue, since it consists in both: it is plain that the perfection of virtuous action requires both: but for the actions many things are required, and the greater and more numerous they are the more.

good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing.

Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods external and goods of the body are eligible at all, and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul, and not the soul for the sake of them.

Any polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, political association sinks into a mere alliance.

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

Excellence is not an act, but habit.

We cannot be prudent without being good.

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.

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.

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.

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;