Beauty is spent by time or withered by disease; wealth ministers to vice rather than to nobility of soul, affording means for indolent living and luring the young to pleasure; strength, in company with wisdom, is, indeed, an advantage, but without wisdom it harms more than it helps its possessors, and while it sets off the bodies of those who cultivate it, yet it obscures the care of the soul.
But virtue, when it grows up with us in our hearts without alloy, is the one possession which abides with us in old age; it is better than riches and more serviceable than high birth; it makes possible what is for others impossible; it supports with fortitude that which is fearful to the multitude; and it considers sloth a disgrace and toil an honor.
Isocrates, To Demonicus, sections 6-7. The examples he uses to back up his point are Heracles and Theseus; we don't usually think of Heracles as a paragon of virtue, but the ancient world did,as can be seen in the famous old story, The Choice of Hercules.
Isocrates, of course, was the most philosophical, and one of the greatest, of the orators of ancient Greece.
