“Plato says, "'T is to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."”

Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), Introduction

Source: Sunsets

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Context: Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Aristotle's teaching concerns the goals of ethical conduct. Unlike the moralists, Aristotle does not say that morality is a thing of absolute worth or that the virtuous person acts in order to adhere to a moral rule or universalizable maxim. And unlike the utilitarians, he does not say morality is good because it contributes to civic peace or to private gain and reputation. Instead, Aristotle says over and over again that the ethically excellent human being acts for the sake of the noble, for the sake of the beautiful.
The human being of fine character seeks to display his own fineness in word and in deed, to show the harmony of his soul in action and the rightness of his choice in the doing of graceful and gracious deeds. The beauty of his action has less to do with the cause that his action will serve or the additional benefits that will accrue to himself or another — though there usually will be such benefits. It has, rather, everything to do with showing forth in action the beautiful soul at work, exactly as a fine dancer dances for the sake of dancing finely. As the ballerina both exploits and resists the downward pull of gravity to rise freely and gracefully above it, so the person of ethical virtue exploits and elevates the necessities of our embodied existence to act freely and gracefully above them. Fine conduct is the beautiful and intrinsically fulfilling being-at-work of the harmonious or excellent soul.

"Conversation with a Stone"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Far (2009)

VII, 48
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Major Pedro Ferreira and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 13
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

The source is actually a 1945 book by Bruce Marshall, The World, The Flesh, and Father Smith, in which he says, "...the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God."
Misattributed