Virtues
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
the virtues · involuntary virtues · voluntary virtues
in the texts
On Moral Ends
The distinction between innate, involuntary mental excellences (talent, memory) and the true, voluntary virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice) born from reason.
But the other kind is of the great and true virtues, which we call voluntary, such as prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, and the rest of the same kind.
So it will come about that the virtue of the mind is set before the virtue of the body, and that the voluntary virtues of the mind surpass the involuntary — which indeed are properly called virtues, and much excel, because they are born from reason, than which there is nothing in man more divine.
Stromata
Ethical virtues, used as an example of things mutually implying and jointly causing an outcome.
Of being happy, at least, being one thing, the virtues, being many, are causes;
So too the virtues are causes to one another of not being separated, on account of their mutual implication;