641 Virtue Quotes

It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.

When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.

Schweitzer in the Congo did not derive more moral credit than Larkin did for living in Hull.

Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Come back again, old heart! Ah me! Methinks in those thy coward fears There might, perchance, a courage be, That fails in these the manlier years; Courage to let the courage sink, Itself a coward base to think, Rather than not for heavenly light Wait on to show the truly right.

We have observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is a sign on the door of our face that says 'Herein dwells a man who is intelligent, prudent, courteous, affable, noble-minded and generous'. A small nose is a cork on the bottle of the opposite vices.

A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.

The man who has received a benefit ought always to remember it, but he who has granted it ought to forget the fact at once.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

It would seem to me that If this physical life, of which we are now aware, does indeed comprise the entirety of human experience, then what we seem to intuitively know to be true is entirely backwards. For if this is the case, then it must be the despicable tyrant, free of any moral values, and not the selfless compassionate who sacrifices himself for the good of mankind that is truly the one most deserving of our reverence and emulation.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.

Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace, thy more than beauty, Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love - a simple duty.

People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.

The winning of honor, is but the revealing of a man's virtue and worth, without disadvantage.

Joy from truth's own glass of fire Sweetly on the searcher smiles; Lest on virtue's steeps he tire, Joy the tedious path beguiles. High on faith's bright hill before us, See her banner proudly wave! Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,- Bursts the bondage of the grave!

Of studie took he most cure and most hede. Noght o word spak he more than was nede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence. Souninge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

Thanne is it wysdom, as it thynketh me, To maken vertu of necessitee.

Bunyan's perception that righteousness is filthy rags, his scorn for Mr Legality in the village of Morality, his defiance of the Church as the supplanter of religion, his insistence on courage as the virtue of virtues, his estimate of the career of the conventionally respectable and sensible Worldly Wiseman as no better at bottom than the life and death of Mr Badman: all this, expressed by Bunyan in the terms of a tinker's theology, is what Nietzsche has expressed in terms of post-Darwinian, post-Schopenhaurian philosophy; Wagner in terms of polytheistic mythology; and Ibsen in terms of mid-XIX century Parisian dramaturgy.

Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in their name: where else but in hell should they have their reward?

I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars... I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.

His character was an extraordinarily mixed one, but there was almost nothing in it that you can put your finger on and call bad, and I believe that even Gandhi's worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive.

They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms have been so much disputed that they have begun to sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes.

Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life.

She repented her virtue of days past as though it had been a crime; and what virtue she had left now crumbled under the furious assault of her pride. Adultery was triumphant; and she reveled in the prospect of its sordid ironies. The thought of her lover made her reel with desire; heart and soul she flung herself into her longing, borne toward him on waves of new rapture; and Charles seemed to her as detached from her life, as irrevocably gone, as impossible and done for, as though he were a dying man, gasping his last before her eyes.

Qui ne voudrait pas rester persuade que ces femmes sont vertueuses? Ne sont-elles pas la fleur du pays? Ne sont-elles pas toutes verdissantes, ravissantes, etourdissantes de beaute, de jeunesse, de vie et d'amour? Croire a leur vertu est une espece de religion sociale; car elles sont l'ornement du monde et font la gloire de la France.

La vertu des femmes est peut-etre une question de temperament.

Les femmes les plus vertueuses ont en elles quelque chose qui n'est jamais chaste.

La vertu, mignonne, est un principe dont les manifestations different selon les milieux: la vertu de Provence, celle de Constantinople, celle de Londres et celle de Paris ont des effets parfaitement dissemblables sans cesser d'etre la vertu.

La science de la mere comporte des merites silencieux, ignores de tous, sans parade, une vertu en detail, un devouement de toutes les heures.

Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse.

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems, Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain, On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes, Poured forth his unpremeditated strain.

A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.

In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it. Yet, when we must put aside our wrath, quench our envy, soften our anger, offer our prayers, and show a disposition which is reasonable, mild, kindly, and loving, how could poverty stand in our way?

If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City 'the Builder and Maker is God.' Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all. We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there! Let us not, after the manner of little children, despise things that are great, and admire those which are little! Not our city's greatness, but virtue of soul is our ornament and defence. If you suppose dignity to belong to a city, think how many persons must partake in this dignity, who are whoremongers, effeminate, depraved and full of ten thousand evil things, and at last despise such honour! But that City above is not of this kind; for it is impossible that he can be a partaker of it, who has not exhibited every virtue.

For what advantage is it, that the world enjoys profound peace, if thou art at war with thyself? This then is the peace we should keep. If we have it, nothing from without will be able to harm us. And to this end the public peace contributes no little: whence it is said, 'That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.' But if any one is disturbed when there is quiet, he is a miserable creature. Seest thou that He speaks of this peace which I call the third (inner, ed.) kind? Therefore when he has said, 'that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life,' he does not stop there, but adds 'in all godliness and honesty.' But we cannot live in godliness and honesty, unless that peace be established. For when curious reasonings disturb our faith, what peace is there? or when spirits of uncleanness, what peace is there?

To conquer enemies does not render kings so illustrious, as to conquer wrath and anger. For, in the former case, the success is due to arms and soldiers; but here the trophy is simply your own, and you have no one to divide the glory of your moral wisdom. You have overcome barbarian war, overcome also Imperial wrath!

The future naval officers, who live within these walls, will find in the career of the man whose life we this day celebrate, not merely a subject for admiration and respect, but an object lesson to be taken into their innermost hearts. . . . Every officer . . . should feel in each fiber of his being an eager desire to emulate the energy, the professional capacity, the indomitable determination and dauntless scorn of death which marked John Paul Jones above all his fellows.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue... This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived - whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious - was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. (p. 32)

There is a flavor that our time (perhaps surfeited by the clumsy imitations of professional patriots) does not usually perceive without some suspicion: the fundamental flavor of the heroic.

When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little excursion into the wayside quagmires had produced the desired effect.

So little in his purse, so much upon his back.

I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.

True religion is the poetry of the heart; it has enchantments useful to our manners; it gives us both happiness and virtue.

Zeal to do all that is in one's power is, in truth, a proof of piety.

If individuals have no virtues, their vices may be of no use to us.

I don't like goody-goodies.

He left a corsair's name to other times, Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.

I regard women as an incarnation of tolerance.

True beauty consists in purity of heart.

Avoir du merite a s'abstenir d'une faute, c'est une facon d'etre coupable.

These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quint-essentials of good citizenship.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy.

Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a virtue to be attained.

[Minding one's own business] is a cheap and second rate virtue, much extolled in certain circles, over estimated by the world at large; in constant use as an excuse for laziness; an alibi for indifference coldness and neglect; the slacker's refuge; the sluggard's sure defense.

The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.

His grandeur he deriv'd from heaven alone, For he was great e'er fortune made him so And wars like mists that rise against the sun Made him but greater seem, not greater grow. No borrow'd bays his temple did adorn, But to our Crown he did fresh jewels bring; Nor was his virtue poison'd soon as born, With the too early thoughts of being King.

His body was wel compact and strong, his stature under 6 foote ( I beleeve about two inches) his head so shaped, as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of vast tresury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fyery as I have known, but the flame of it kept downe, for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distresse, even to an effeminate measure; though God had made him a heart, wherein was left little roume for any feare, but what was due to himselfe, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards suffrerers. A larger soule, I thinke, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was.

He had no shred of fear or hatred in him.

Odd isn't it, that physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist Oh they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.

Smart, but not smart-mouthed; obedient, but willing to take the initiative; courageous, but not foolish; confident, but not boastful.

Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?

Mas, sea verdad o sueno, obrar bien es lo que importa. Si fuere verdad, por serlo; si no, por ganar amigos para cuando despertemos.

Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and licence, may go forth to the fields and to the woods, inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, or catching from the odours and sounds of Autumn some diviner mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart. Whosoever is no deceiver or destroyer of his fellow men - no liar, no flatterer, no murderer may walk among his species, deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of beautiful or of majestic, some intercourse with the Universal God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine and to estimate every imagination which suggests itself to his mind - whosoever is that which he designs to become, and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own nature shall consider and approve - he has already seen God.

Jesus Christ expressly asserts that distinction between the good and evil principle which it has been the practice of all theologians to confound. How far his doctrines, or their interpretation, may be true, it would scarcely have been worth while to inquire, if the one did not afford an example and an incentive to the attainment of true virtue, whilst the other holds out a sanction and apology for every species of mean and cruel vice.

J'ai ete etonne du plaisir qu'on eprouve en faisant le bien.

Le scelerat a ses vertus, comme l'honnete homme a ses faiblesses.

Je suis jeune, il est vrai; mais aux ames bien nees La valeur n'attend point le nombre des annees.

Ta vertu met ta gloire au-dessus de ton crime.

If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness--a good and wise life.

There is only one good, which is knowledge, and one evil, which is ignorance.