Ed N. Smith

October 4th 2026

The Circle of Life

You may have heard of the four cardinal virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude and Justice.

Virtues make you happy: a fully-flourishing human being.

St Thomas Aquinas broke these cardinal virtues down into smaller sub virtues. This is exciting, because it makes it easy to understand how you can work on strengthening yourself in specific, concrete areas.

Dr Andrew Abela arranged these sub virtues into a wheel, as shown in the "Anatomy of Virtue" wheel above. I thoroughly recommend starting at "Restraint" at 12 o'clock position and working your way around, reading each one.

There's a free 15 min validated quiz to find where your strengths lie.

Or there's this app: https://growvirtue.com/

P.S. Here's the circle of life.

Sources:

Anatomy of Virtue diagram
Virtues as Superhabits table (originally here).
VirtuQuest Strengths Survey.
GrowVirtue app.

ed@inpursuitofvirtue.com
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