Martin Seligman Quotes

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

Temperance is love surrendering itself wholly to Him who is its object; courage is love bearing all things gladly for the sake of Him who is its object; justice is love serving only Him who is its object, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence is love making wise distinction between what hinders and what helps itself.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

Even virtue is an art; and even its devotees are divided into those who practise it and those who are merely amateurs.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

We should make virtue our master, not our servant.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.

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

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.

The whole of virtue consists in its practice.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

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

The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves.

The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

...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.

And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.

Men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.