Dietrich von Hildebrand

"Who is the man who loves life, who desires the day in order to enjoy good things? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from deceitful words. Turn away from evil and do good, seek after peace and pursue it."

Foreword

By Alice von Hildebrand

"Who is the man who loves life, who desires the day in order to enjoy good things? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from deceitful words. Turn away from evil and do good, seek after peace and pursue it."

We can achieve pleasures; but no pleasure — regardless of its intensity — can satisfy the longing of the human soul. Man is made for better things.

There is something paradoxical in the fact that men yearn so deeply for happiness (which Aristotle claims to be the highest good) and yet so often choose paths which cannot possibly lead them to that goal.

Man is often the artisan of his own doom, his own worst enemy.

Moral values are the highest among all natural values. Goodness, purity, truthfulness, and humility rank higher than genius, brilliance, and exuberant vitality, higher than the beauty of nature or of art, and higher than the stability and power of a state.

it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.

A material thing, like a stone or a house, cannot be morally good or bad, just as moral goodness is not possible to a tree or a dog. Similarly, works of the human mind (for example, discoveries, scientific books, and works of art), cannot properly be said to be the bearers of moral values; they cannot be faithful, humble, and loving.

A material thing, like a stone or a house, cannot be morally good or bad, just as moral goodness is not possible to a tree or a dog. Similarly, works of the human mind (for example, discoveries, scientific books, and works of art), cannot properly be said to be the bearers of moral values; they cannot be faithful, humble, and loving. They can, at the most, indirectly reflect these values as bearing the imprint of the human mind

But how can man participate in these moral values? Are they given to him by nature like the beauty of his face, his intelligence, or a lively temperament? No, they can only grow out of conscious, free attitudes; man himself must essentially cooperate for their realization.