Isaac Barrow Quotes

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

Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right; he will grow daily more and more right. It is at bottom the condition on which all men have to cultivate themselves.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

I've always been a good person, but I wanna be, like, the best person.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

There is no greater miracle than our conscious efforts to become good human beings.

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

The largest part of goodness is the will to become good.

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

Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress.

For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.

Character is perfectly educated will.

I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

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.

Heart and head are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.