Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.
To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.
Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.
I'm told there's a saying from those ancient times, kalos kai agathos, when someone or something is good and beautiful on the outside, but is also good and noble on the inside in terms of character and in terms of purpose. And I think that's a fine description of the friendship that exists between the Greek people and the American people.
Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying.
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.
If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme virtue, which will be the virtueof the best thing.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.
Wisdom and courage make mutual contributions to greatness.
Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.
Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.
Don't fear god, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good.
Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.
The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.
