No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues as disease is far more contagious than health.

If you can be well without health you may be happy without virtue.

With respect to the first of these obstacles it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists that they confine their attention to Wealth and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

Virtue is simply happiness and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue and always an enemy to happiness.

I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering that there is a sort of psychic economy whereby if you embrace success happiness and comfort these things have to be paid for.

There is a set of religious or rather moral writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine and to which we have but one objection namely that it is not true.

To desire and strive to be of some service to the world to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us and surely it is a good haven to sail for.

Happiness is secured through virtue it is a good attained by man's own will.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

The founders of a new colony whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery and another portion as the site of a prison.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

If virtue promises happiness prosperity and peace then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us progress is always an approach toward it.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind and there is no happiness equal to contentment there is no disease like covetousness and no virtue like mercy.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth We are happy when we are growing.

Happiness is a virtue not its reward.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore guard accordingly and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief.

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others but only those who have greater designs.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

When you sing with a group of people you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy the great social virtue.