Quotes about Virtue

The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realised is right.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against them when appropriate.

In charting one's course in life, it is important never to forget that many things that cannot be called wrong or evil are nevertheless not good for us.

if you sufficiently dismember yourself, you will not be able to do any wrong action. This is the logic by which Jesus reduces the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees to the absurd.

THOSE WITH A WELL-KEPT heart are persons who are prepared for and capable of responding to the situations of life in ways that are good and right.

Great power requires great character if it is to be a blessing and not a curse, and that character is something we only grow toward.

One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to good feeling that one does not now feel.

There is a distinctive emphasis by Jesus on loving your neighbor, your "near dweller," not upon loving "humanity" or "everyone."19 What this means is that our duty and our virtue is to love those with whom we are in effectual contact—those we can really do something about.

Can anyone now seriously believe that if people are only permitted or enabled to do what they want, they will then be happy or more disposed to do what is right?

Heroism, generally, is totally out of place in the spiritual life, until we grow to the point at which it would never be thought of as heroism anyway.

Such planning should include identifying the things in your life that you believe trouble Jesus—impatience, overeating, lying, or whatever it may be for you.