Something from ... Augustine on what is good

Sinful minds craft a warped view of good and evil.  Good is often reduced to "what is good for me" or "what gives me pleasure."  Evil is reduced to "what I don't like."  As a result, people may embrace being evil because their vices bring them pleasure, but will despise being honest, hard-working people if they do not receive some kind of reward for it--whether fame or fortune.  

St. Augustine saw this same perverse attitude in the Roman Empire--people who want good things but have no desire to be good themselves.  That we still see this comes as no surprise; as King Solomon wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

From Augustine: "For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise.  It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself." 

The City of God, Book 2, Chapter 1.

Page 43, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaaf.  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI. (c) 1956.