Writers would have it that heroes and good characters are less interesting than villains and pests because virtue is boring. I’ll agree that that’s often true in stories, or if you’re Dickens, and it may be that this chapter is doomed to fall short of rousing your passionate interest. But in real life, I have to say, I have found authentic goodness magnificent, muscular, tonic, as rare and grand as Yosemite’s El Capitan, a mountain whose magnitude stuns you further when you realize that it is a monolith, one whole, seamless rock. I find absolutely nothing boring about true goodness.

–June Sprigg, Simple Gifts: Lessons in Living from a Shaker Village