Maimonides Quotes

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.

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.

In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.

Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.

Folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.

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

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.

One must choose in all things a mean just and good.

There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary.

Content not thyself that thou art virtuous in the general; for one link being wanting, the chain is defective.

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

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

The world loves talent but pays off on character.

It is not goodness to be better than the worst.

If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

There's strong men of wisdom in many different fields. They say 5% of the people are wise and righteous and 10% are wise but use their wiseness for wickedness or to deceive others. It's like a magician: he knows the answer to the trick, but you don't. He has to keep you blind to the truth in order for the illusion to work. When you've got that kind of wisdom and somebody else doesn't, you can always take advantage of them.