The imaginations of believers have dressed up and exaggerated the excellence of the style and matter of the New Testament generally, in the same manner, in which they have the moral instructions of Jesus.
Excellence
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
Of my English friends, I should find language too poor to speak the just praise and the excellence which shines in their characters and lives.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.
Badness you can get easily, in quantity; the road is smooth, and it lies close by, But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it.
Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.
Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.
Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence.