Jeff Cooper Quotes

Character is long-standing habit.

One can acquire some virtues by feigning them for a long time.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

Ambition, in a private man is a vice, is in a prince the virtue.

My parents were pretty lenient with me. But, they gave me morality while I was growing up. They taught me the difference between right and wrong.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.

The more men value money the less they value virtue.

Surely one will not expect men to be less moral than women, nor less capable of disciplining their desires

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

… vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled.

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are.

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.

Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.

Therefore the good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then both benefit himself by acting nobly and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure both himself and his neighbors. With the bad man therefore, what he does is not in accord with what he ought to do, but the good man does what he ought, since intelligence always chooses for itself that which is best, and the good man obeys his intelligence.