In the first years of life, the most important is maternal education, because morality must be implanted in a child as a feeling.
Inspiration is nothing but the state of one who, seized with inspiration, immerses himself completely in a thing, is completely absorbed by it, and who does not rest until he finds a suitable artistic form, until he is given a final chiseling, until it is brought to completion.
Politeness is a sign of goodwill and consent to do service, especially to those with whom we are not in close relations of friendship or friendship.
The external fact does not differ from the internal one. In a bad deed and intention is essentially bad and not good.
A will that decides nothing is not a real will: one without character never reaches solutions.
Education aims to make man an independent being, that is, a being with a free will.
For he who himself is not free, neither are others free.
Virtue is something universal, required of all people, not something innate, but something acquired by the individual as a result of his own activity.
Virtue became an art that must and could be acquired, but whose fate proved to be strange: while the other arts were perfected and one generation learned from another, only morality evidently did not spread, in this situation everyone has to learn from the beginning, without being able to use the experience of previous generations.
Friendship is based on the similarity of characters and interests in a common thing and not on the pleasure you get from the person of another.
The foolish man follows his inclinations and, because of them, forgets his obligations.
The foolish man considers it necessary to fulfill his obligations, but has no will to guide his inclinations and habits.
If the will clings only to trifles, to something devoid of content, it turns into stubbornness. The latter resembles the character, but does not have its content.
Evil is nothing but the inconsistency between "being" and "ought."
If the facts contradict my theory, then so much the worse for the facts.
If a man chooses as his goal something transitory, that is, non-essential, insignificant, it is an interest directed not to the given thing, but to himself... Such is, for example, moral vanity, when a man relies in his actions on his superiority and generally shows more interest in himself than in the work at hand.
The ideal represents any reality in the form of its highest truth.
Of all the immoral attitudes, the attitude that children are considered like slaves is the most immoral.
Of all responsibilities to others, the most important is honesty in word and deed.
Art has an extremely active part in the realization of the aims of reason, for it prepares the ground for morality, so that when it comes it finds half the work already done, namely, liberation from the yoke of sensibility.
The truth of the means lies in their adequacy to the end.
True personal benefit is achieved only through moral behavior.
True politeness should be seen as a duty, for we should generally have a benevolent attitude towards others.
Every man must...be asked to discover his character. A man of character imposes himself on others, because they know who they are dealing with in his person.
Concerning morality: its supremacy consists in succeeding in having the guilt and suffering of our hearts buried in it, and the heart becoming its own tomb.
Character is primarily that formal part of the energy with which man, without deviating from the already chosen path, pursues his goals and interests, preserving in all his actions his agreement with himself.
Every work of art belongs to its time, its people, its environment.
Everyone wants to be better than the surrounding world and considers himself better than it. He who is truly better embodies this world better than others.
When a man performs a moral deed, he cannot be considered, on that alone, a virtuous person; he is virtuous only if this behavior is the basic feature of his character.
The moral principle is primarily about mindset and intention. But here it is important that not only the intention but also the deed be good.