Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden.
So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency.
The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.
Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions — what we do — that we are happy or the reverse.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Those who are truly virtuous have the best right to rebel, but they are also the least likely to do so.
Humility is a flower which does not grow in everyone's garden.
