Virtue

"Virtue shuts the door on no one. It is open to everyone and lets us all in, invites us in: the freeborn, ex-slaves, slaves, kings, and exiles. It does not choose ancestry or wealth; virtue is satisfied with the bare person."
Seneca, On Benefits 3.18.2

Hope

"Hope is one of the Theological virtues.  This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.  It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.  If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who though most of the next."

C.S. Lewis,  Mere Christianity

"An old fox"

"Age and difficult experiences correct our youthful pride.  Our mistakes and failures teach us that we are foolish to depend too much on ourselves, and to think everything good will come to us just because we're our own invincible selves.

We learn, eventually, that there are times when it is good to take shelter and not insist on placing ourselves in the thick of the storm to prove ourselves.

Certainly with God's help we can develop the virtue of fortitude to saintly levels, but is it really necessary to place ourselves deliberately on the precipice?

It's good to get to know ourselves well.  It helps to know our limits, and to understand that there are
certain situations that easily bring out our worst, and to avoid these situations -- these occasions of sin --as much as we can.

And that, of course, takes a bit of fortitude as well!"

Archibald Lambert Reilly, O.S.B.  in Latin Sayings for Spiritual Growth, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Huntington, IN, 2001.

A Good Man

A good man was there of religioun,
And was a poure persoun of a toun,
But riche he was of hooly thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That cristes gospel trewely wolde preche;
His parishenns  devoutly wolde he teche.
Benynge he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversitee ful pacient,
And swich he was ypreved ofte sithes.

Geoffrey Chaucer,  The Canterbury Tales

A right spirit

"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things. in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltations and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it is betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is its meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned: it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life ... When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightest present me to the world of Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let his be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

James Naylor. A Collection of Sundry Books, Papers and Epistles. 1716.