And both those words apply to Brooks's trenchant, humane, often beautiful recent book, The Road to Character, in which he traces the journeys of ten or so famous men and women who lived in various times and found disparate vocations but who all conquered the bad angels of their natures and made permanent commitments to virtue and humility and meaning.
In addition, needy families abandoned by the states come to view government as their enemy rather than as their protector, thereby further eroding a commitment to civic virtue.
While approachable he was not socially adept: he both took offence easily and gave it by his zealous commitment to the virtue of candour among friends.
Their dedication to musical eccentricity mirrors a broader commitment to the virtues of weirdness: the Beastie Boys' records are diaries of their pop culture obsessions, and when they rap about their skill at the board game Boggle or romp around in ridiculous costumes, they are not so much sending themselves up as inviting everyone to join them in a state of happy-go-lucky tomfoolery.
What is impressive about that book, and now its sequel The Twelve, is that there is nothing contemptuous about Cronin's approach; this is a formal exercise based on study and thought, but it has also a serious commitment to the virtues he has found in genre fiction – well-paced flurries of action and a deepened portrayal of the conventional emotions that too often become clichés.
This code is an articulation of the earlier Mohists' commitment to the virtues associated with the paradigm social relations of ruler, subject, father, son, and brother.
She had no shortage of boyfriends, but none had shared her commitment to the Chinese virtue of filial piety: responsibility to parents and relatives.
This was an era when normal women were presumed to have a leading role in defending society against moral weakness of the sorts for which the feebleminded were feared, based on a notion about women's commitment to maintain community virtue for protection of the young.
Fans everywhere should treasure such a brazen commitment to the higher virtues of the game, and reflect with a smile that it comes from such an extraordinary servant of the game.
As the preceding passage suggests, wisdom involves an understanding of and commitment to the other virtues, especially benevolence and righteousness.
