Why be virtuous? Because the reward for having a good character is happiness.

Happiness is a long lasting enduring enjoyment of life, it is being in love with living. It is your reward for achieving a good character and personal rational values in life.

Once you learn to have confidence in your own mind and once you discover the virtues that make it possible for you to achieve your values and that make your life worth living, then you will experience the result - an earned pride and a genuine self-esteem. And of course happiness.

A virtue is the intellectual achievement of recognizing certain facts of morality, and acting accordingly. Notice that virtues involve both thinking and acting. There is only one basic virtue - rationality, and all other virtues are various forms of it. Some of the other virtues are:

• independence
• integrity
• honesty
• justice
• productiveness
• pride

• Honesty
• Selfishness
• Self-esteem
• The Art of Avoiding Responsibility by Appealing to a ``Moral Authority"
• Duty
• Toleration
• Compassion
  
• How Altruism Undermines Mental Health and Happiness