“Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.”
As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999)
The Golden Verses
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Pythagoras 121
ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher -585–-495 BCRelated quotes
“Justice is a constant uprightness in words and in deeds.”
Four Discoveries of Praise to God, eds. C. Matthew McMahon and Therese B. McMahon (Puritan Publications, 2012), Ch. 2, p. 28
The Joy of Painting, "Meadow Lake" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARWowi0QXI&feature=youtu.be&t=13m4s (Season 2, Episode 1)
“Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"”
Non confundant opera tua sermonem tuum: ne cum in Ecclesia loqueris, tacitus quilibet respondeat, cur ergo haec quae dicis, ipse non facis?
Letter 52
Letters
“Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.”
As quoted in Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs, Volume 1 (2009) by Iam A. Freeman
“Reporter: Could you be clear about your practicing habits since we can't see you practice?”
Press conference video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI
Source: The Complete Essays
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Misattributed
Variant: We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.
Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'" (p. 76). The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant's summation of Aristotle's ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself.