Jerome K. Jerome Quotes

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through past prejudice, his duty becomes part of his nature.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

It is no easy task to be good.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

Live the principles and the values. Almost nobody in America is living them. Learn the truth. Live the life of our founders. Be a decent, righteous, forthright honest man or woman.

Of all parts of wisdom, the practice is the best. Socrates was esteemed the wisest man of his time because he turned his acquired knowledge into morality, and aimed at goodness more than greatness.

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

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

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

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

It is easy to be virtuous in prospective.

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.

If virtue precede us every step will be safe.

The finest defense of character is correct action. Acquaint yourself with virtue, and you can expect proper treatment from those around you.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be, few in the extreme, but all in the degree.

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.