Herbert Spencer Quotes

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

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

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

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

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.

We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

The whole of virtue consists in its practice.

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

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.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man's prosperity, or even happiness.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

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

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

Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.

The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.

But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant.

If I am virtuous and worthy, for whom should I not maintain a proper concern?

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

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

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.