Philip Sidney Quotes

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

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

An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

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

The whole of virtue consists in its practice.

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

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

...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.

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

All effective actions require the passport of morality.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

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.

Let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

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

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

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.

I believe in doing good for good's sake.

All religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good

It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.

Virtue is indeed its own reward.

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.