Great Throughts Treasury

"Honor is not that reward of virtue, for which the virtuous work, but they receive honor from men by way of reward, as from those who have nothing greater to offer. But virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition." -

"The reward of doing one duty is the power to do another." - Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

"Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life." - Adolfo Barcella

"Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

"The true Indian sets no price upon either his property or his labor. His generosity is limited only by his strength and ability. He regards it as an honor to be selected for a difficult or dangerous service, and would think it shameful to ask for any reward, saying rather: “Let the person I serve express his thanks according to his own bringing up and his sense of honor.”" - Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

"Don't think too much about yourselves. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking of others; this will reward you. Nourish your minds by good reading, constant reading. Discover what your lifework is, work in which you can do most good, in which you can be happiest. Be unafraid in all things when you know you are in the right." - Charles W. Eliot

"The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"The best reward of a kindly deed is the knowledge of having done it." - Edgar Fawcett

"Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one." - Owen Feltham

"Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains." - Henry Fielding

"The effects of our actions may be postponed but they are never lost. There is an inevitable reward for good deeds and an inescapable punishment for bad. Meditate upon this truth, and seek always to earn good wages from Destiny." - Wu Ming Fu

"Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts is silence, and find his reward in the; exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"All merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly, in this respect “we have our reward.”" -

"Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?" - David Hume

"Mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist - and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists - knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession. The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking feeling and fancying." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

"Who thinks of reward serves himself, not God." - Israel Salanter Lipkin

"Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it." - Walter Lippmann

"Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided." - John Locke

"Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul... No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it." - Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

"Goodness is the only value that seems in this world of appearances to have any claim to be an end in itself. Virtue is its own reward." -

"Virtue is to her self the best reward." - Henry Spencer Moore

"Love transcends normal needs and motives, revealing a unity among people and things more fundamental than any differences between them. It is its own reward." - Michael Murphy

"Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but, if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue." -

"The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth." -

"To seek virtue for the sake of reward is to dig for iron with a spade of gold." - Nikita Ivanovich Panin

"He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both [at last] in the end." - William Penn

"Each virtue is its own reward." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Truth... is its own reward." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Virtue is the highest reward. Virtue truly goes before all things." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

"Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength, his glory and his pleasure." -

"Man is at his best when stimulated by hope of reward, fear of failure, and the light of a star." - Erwin H. Schell

"He that does good to another, does also good to himself; not only in the consequence, but in the very act of doing it; for the consciousness of well-doing is an ample reward." -

"The wages of sin and the reward of virtue are not so different." - Marjorie Bowen, pen names included Joseph Shearing, George R. Preddy, John Winch, Robert Paye and Margaret Campbell, Pseudonym of Mrs Garbrielle Margaret Vere Long née Campbell

"Virtue herself is her own fairest reward." - Silius Italicus, fully Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus

"Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile." - Alexander Smith

"That charity alone endures which flows from a sense of duty and a hope in God. this is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery from which all but the lowest of human wretches have fled; this is that charity which no labor can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust; that toils, that pardons, that suffers; that is seen by no man, and honored by no man, but, like the great laws of Nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to a future and better world for its reward." - Sydney Smith

"Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we rejoice in it because we restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, it is because we rejoice in it that we are able to restrain our lusts." -

"Bliss is virtue, not its reward." -

"Virtue is its own reward. There’s a pleasure in doing good which sufficiency pays itself." -

"If virtue were its own reward, it would no longer be a human quality, but supernatural." -

"A generous action is its own reward." - William Walsh

"In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else, that is good, is its own reward." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"The reward of the souls in the world beyond is their ability to attain the true concept of God which is a source of the most wonderful felicity, an attainment impossible for man in this early life because of the disturbances on the part of matter." - Isaac Abravanel, fully Don Itshak ben Yehouda Abravanel

"Anyone whose reward from God is deferred until tomorrow has not truly worshipped Him today." - Abu Yazid Tayfur ibn 'Isa ibn Surushan al-Bismtami

"That the individual man should seek to know himself for what he really is and should esteem himself for his true worth make inevitable his desire to be known and esteemed by others according to his merits... God alone is the judge of one’s ultimate worth, and virtue is its own reward." -

"Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not see, and its reward is to see and enjoy what we believe." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"The reward of studying is understanding." - Babylonian Talmud

"Success is the reward for accomplishment." - Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band