“Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.”
More from Adam Smith on Ethics
Others on Ethics
Ayn Rand
9 quotes“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
Saint Augustine
8 quotes“If we live good lives the times are also good. As we are such are the times.”
David Hume
7 quotes“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
Dante
6 quotes“The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender.”
Pope Benedict XVI
4 quotes“Morality is not man's prison but rather the divine element in him.”
Thomas Paine
4 quotes“Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right a...”
Einstein
4 quotes“True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience of such men as Brandeis.~ Albert Einstein”
Marcus Aurelius
4 quotes“Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that d...”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 quotes“in order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it.”
Alexander Pope
3 quotes“Order is heaven's first law.”
Confucius
3 quotes“Tsze-kung wished to dispense with the sacrifice of a sheep for the New Moon ceremony. The Master said, "You love the she...”
Percy Shelley
3 quotes“All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.”