Echoes

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

Of a surety, at the Day of Judgment it will be demanded of us, not what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how holily we have lived.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

All praise of virtue consists in action.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

To see what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Go forth in virtue!

My life is my message.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Deeds, not words.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.

Well done is better than well said.

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Virtue is serious business; everything else is farce.

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.