virtue

'Knowledge, without common sense,' says Lee, is 'folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.' But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the non-performance of base ones.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

. . . happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it. . . .