“These Names of Virtues with their Precepts were”

— Benjamin Franklin

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to Dulness. Drink not to Elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling Conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each part of your Business have its Time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. Waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no Time. Be always employ'd in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no Uncleanliness in Body, Clothes, or Habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. [Part II, pp. 67-68]
The last of Franklin's chart of 13 virtues: "My List of Virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker Friend having kindly inform'd me that I was generally thought proud; … I determined endeavouring to cure myself if I could of this Vice or Folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my List..."
Part II, p. 75.
The Autobiography (1818)

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Benjamin Franklin 183

American author, printer, political theorist, politician, p… 1706–1790

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Preface.
A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)
Context: All that the book contains is the elucidation of but one precept: namely, to interpret language by nature. We [generally and incorrectly] reverse the rule and interpret nature by language.

“Virtue's a mere name,
Or 'tis high venture that achieves high aim.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, epistle xvii, p. 138
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles

“Freedom is the name of virtue: Slavery, of vice…. None is a slave whose acts are free.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Fragment x.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

“This laudable quality is commonly known by the name of Manners and Good-breeding, and consists in a Fashionable Habit, acquir'd by Precept and Example, of flattering the Pride and Selfishness of others, and concealing our own with Judgment and Dexterity.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 69
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

“He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Canto III, stanza 24; this can be compared to: "Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, "Democritus to the Reader".
The Corsair (1814)

“You young maidens, too long constrained by a fanciful Virtue's absurd and dangerous bonds and by those of a disgusting religion, imitate the fiery Eugénie; be as quick as she to destroy, to spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents.”

Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom

To Libertines
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

“The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

“With gay descriptions sprinkle here and there
Some grave instructive sentences with care,
That touch on life, some moral good pursue,
And give us virtue in a transient view;
Rules, which the future sire may make his own,
And point the golden precepts to his son.”
Saepe etiam memorandum inter ludicra memento, Permiscere aliquid breviter, mortalia corda Quod moveat, tangens humanae commoda vitae, Qodque olim jubeant natos meminisse parentes.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book II, line 278
De Arte Poetica (1527)

“Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But aretê. Excellence. Dharma!”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But aretê. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.

“Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 3
Do What You Will (1928)

“These Names of Virtues with their Precepts were”

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