Notes & Highlights for The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg

The way we learn right from wrong and live a good life, she writes, is not by memorizing rules, analyzing concepts or calculating outcomes — but by emulating those who we admire.

describe presence rather than means towards an end: nourishing, edifying, redemptive; courageous, generous, winsome; adventurous, curious, tender.

Humanity is given these instincts toward virtue by nature, and we can thrive and live nobly if we learn to live consistently with our own nature and our duties, while making the most of the resources we have been given.

Education in virtue is a kind of formation, a retraining of our dispositions. “Learning” virtue—becoming virtuous—is more like practicing scales on the piano than learning music theory: the goal is, in a sense, for your fingers to learn the scales so they can then play “naturally,” as it were. Learning here isn’t just information acquisition; it’s