Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

Happiness is inseparably connected with decent, clean behavior.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever .... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

Whenever you put happiness before righteousness, you will be doomed to misery. That is the great message of the Bible from beginning to end. They alone are truly happy who are seeking to be righteous.

There must be in prudence also some master virtue.

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

If what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be the best. And the same principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities and of constitutions; for the constitution is in a figure the life of the city.

One path alone leads to a life of peace. The path of virtue.

I don't think it matters if there is a god or not. I've met people who believe in God that are good and that are bad. And I've met people who don't believe in God that are good and that are bad. So, just be good. I'm good. Not cos I think I'll go to heaven but because when I do something bad, I feel bad. And when I do something good, I feel good.

We must now examine whether just people also live better and are happier than unjust ones. I think it's clear already that this is so, but we must look into it further, since the argument concerns no ordinary topic, but the way we ought to live.

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.

Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.

Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.

Shall ignorance of good and ill Dare to direct the eternal will? Seek virtue, and of that possest, To Providence resign the rest.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.