Life Without and Life Within (1859), My Seal-Ring
Context: Mercury has cast aside
The signs of intellectual pride,
Freely offers thee the soul:
Art thou noble to receive?
Canst thou give or take the whole,
Nobly promise and believe?
Then thou wholly human art,
A spotless, radiant, ruby heart,
And the golden chain of love
Has bound thee to the realm above.
“Virtue alone is the unerring sign of a noble soul.”
La vertu, d'un cœur noble est la marque certaine.
Satire 5, l. 42
Satires (1716)
Original
La vertu, d'un cœur noble est la marque certaine.
Satires (1716)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux 30
French poet and critic 1636–1711Related quotes
“Virtue is the health of the soul.”
Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, fragment 359
“Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.”
Source: The Analects, Chapter IV
“You sod, Leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone”
Poem In the theatre, in: Dannie Abse (1997) Welsh retrospective, p. 43
Health and Education http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17437/17437-h/17437-h.htm, The Science of Health (1874).
“Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 4.
“The doctrine of virtue and vice depends on that of the soul.”
X. Concerning Virtue and Vice.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: The doctrine of virtue and vice depends on that of the soul. When the irrational soul enters into the body and immediately produces fight and desire, the rational soul, put in authority over all these, makes the soul tripartite, composed of reason, fight, and desire. Virtue in the region of reason is wisdom, in the region of fight is courage, in the region of desire is temperance; the virtue of the whole soul is righteousness. It is for reason to judge what is right, for fight in obedience to reason to despise things that appear terrible, for desire to pursue not the apparently desirable, but, that which is with reason desirable. When these things are so, we have a righteous life; for righteousness in matters of property is but a small part of virtue. And thus we shall find all four virtues in properly trained men, but among the untrained one may be brave and unjust, another temperate and stupid, another prudent and unprincipled. Indeed, these qualities should not be called virtues when they are devoid of reason and imperfect and found in irrational beings. Vice should be regarded as consisting of the opposite elements. In reason it is folly, in fight, cowardice, in desire, intemperance, in the whole soul, unrighteousness.
The virtues are produced by the right social organization and by good rearing and education, the vices by the opposite.