Virtue Quotes
An ambassador is a man of virtue sent to lie abroad for his country; a news - writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for himself.Sir Henry Wotton, "Reliquae Wottonianae".
Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers virtue is a vivid and separate ting, like pain or a particular smell.G. K. Chesterton
Will it not be felt that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice...Marquis de Sade, Justine
If you live long enough, the venerability factor creeps in first, you get accused of things you never did, and later, credited for virtues you never had.I. F. Stone
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts.Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792
Virtue can only flourish among equals.Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
That man is good who does good to others if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further it is heroic, it is perfect.La Bruyere
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.Voltaire
The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1653
Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
Patience is the greatest of all virtues.Cato the Elde
What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.Henry Kissinge
From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.Victor Hugo
Silver and gold are not the only coin virtue too passes current all over the world.Euripides
The love of money is the root of all virtue.George Bernard Shaw
No company is preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.C. C. Colton
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.Petrarch, De Remedies
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.Clive Staples Lewis
All government - - Indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - - Is founded on compromise and barter.Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America
Rather do what is nothing in the purpose than to be idle, that the devil may find thee doing. The bird that sits is easily shot when the fliers escape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and is the self - Made sepulcher of a living man.Francis Quarles
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.Henri - Fr? d? ric Amiel
There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.Mary Bertone
Not to be cheered by praise, Not to be grieved by blame, But to know thoroughly ones own virtues or powers Are the characteristics of an excellent man.Saskya Pandita
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.Aristotle, Rhetoric
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men... the master of superstition is the people and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.Francis Bacon
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.Cato the Elde
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.Ludwig van Beethoven
The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.Whitheead
Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far - Seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.Joseph Wood Krutch
Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.Aristotle
To think ill of mankind, and not to wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.William Hazlitt
