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“The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.”
The contrast treats composure as a feature of cultivated character rather than as freedom from all difficulty: the “superior man” is represented as settled enough not to live in continual inward distress.
Source note: The Analects of Confucius, Book VII, Chapter XXXVI, James Legge translation, Project Gutenberg #3330.
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“Virtue then is a state apt to exercise deliberate choice, being in the relative mean, determined by reason.”
Virtue is treated as a stable capacity for deliberate choice, guided by practical judgment rather than by extremes of impulse or deficiency.
Source note: Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter VI; the public-domain English translation defines virtue through deliberate choice and the relative mean.
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“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
Voice: Fictional character · Lord Henry Wotton
The line is a deliberately seductive paradox rather than practical advice, expressing the character’s philosophy of appetite and indulgence.
Source note: The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890 Lippincott magazine text, Chapter 2; Lord Henry states the temptation paradox while influencing Dorian in Basil Hallward’s garden.
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“Then we must do no wrong?”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
The brief question tests whether the previously accepted principle against wrongdoing still holds when obedience to it becomes personally costly.
Source note: Crito, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates is testing the moral premises that will govern his decision about escaping prison.
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“Law is reason without desire.”
Good law is idealized as judgment governed by reason rather than by the changing appetites or personal passions of an individual ruler.
Source note: Politics, Book III, William Ellis translation; the line appears in a discussion of law and political rule.
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“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Emerson attacks rigid consistency when it prevents people from revising judgment in the light of new thought.
Source note: Essay “Self-Reliance”; Emerson criticizes rigid adherence to past opinions when fresh judgment requires revision.