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11 ideas
4332 | Virtue is a concord of reason and emotion, with pleasure and pain trained to correct ends [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue is the general concord of reason and emotion, but there is one key element, which is the correct formation of our feelings of pleasure and pain, which makes us hate what we ought to hate, and love what we ought to love. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 653c) | |
A reaction: An important truth, taken up by Aristotle. To see another person humiliated gives some people pleasure and other people pain. |
248 | A serious desire for moral excellence is very rare indeed [Plato] |
Full Idea: People who are anxious to attain moral excellence with all possible speed are pretty thin on the ground. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 718e) |
253 | Every crime is the result of excessive self-love [Plato] |
Full Idea: The cause of each and every crime we commit is precisely this excessive love of ourselves. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 731e) |
263 | The only worthwhile life is one devoted to physical and moral perfection [Plato] |
Full Idea: A life devoted to every physical perfection and every moral virtue is the only life worth the name. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 807c) |
235 | Virtue is the aim of all laws [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue is the aim of the laws the legislator lays down. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 631a) |
277 | The Guardians must aim to discover the common element in the four cardinal virtues [Plato] |
Full Idea: The guardians of the state should aim to get an exact idea of the common element in all the four virtues. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 965d) |
7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
254 | Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided [Plato] |
Full Idea: Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 732c) |
266 | Injustice is the mastery of the soul by bad feelings, even if they do not lead to harm [Plato] |
Full Idea: My general description of injustice is this: the mastery of the soul by anger, fear, pleasure, pain, envy and desires, whether they lead to actual damage or not. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 863e) |
242 | The best people are produced where there is no excess of wealth or poverty [Plato] |
Full Idea: The community in which neither wealth nor poverty exists will produce the finest characters. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 679b) |
256 | Virtue and great wealth are incompatible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Virtue and great wealth are quite incompatible. | |
From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 742e) |