Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Virtue must engage reality to avoid evil, yet fully merging with it denies its nature.
In plain terms
Virtue needs reality but cannot fully become it.
What can you take from it?
Balance virtue and reality.

Where it applies

  • ethical dilemmas
  • moral choices
  • leading others

Putting it to work

  • stay grounded
  • maintain principles
  • adapt without compromising

Questions to consider

  • How do you balance morals and reality?
  • Can virtue survive in the real world?

Another view

Reality often demands compromising virtue.

More from Albert Camus

  1. Utopia replaces God by the future. Then it proceeds to identify the future with ethics; the only values are those which serve this particular future. For that …

    Permalink to quote #239
  2. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and …

    Permalink to quote #241
  3. Unity and diversity, and never one without the other...

    Permalink to quote #238

Related quotes

  1. Virtue is its own reward.

    Ancius BoethiusAncius Boethius quote #1
  2. Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

    James ShirleyJames Shirley quote #5
  3. Absolute Evil is not the kingdom of hell. The inhabitants of hell are ourselves, i.e., those who pay our painful, embarrassing, humanistic duties to society an…

    V. S PritchettV. S Pritchett quote #7