Virtue Quotes
Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.George Washington
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.Thomas Paine
Men are equal it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.Voltaire
Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves.Benjamin Franklin
Modesty and unselfishness - - These are the virtues which men praise - - And pass by.Andr Maurois
If thou desire to purchase honor with thy wealth, consider first how that wealth became thine; if thy labor got it, let thy wisdom keep it; if oppression found it, let repentance restore it; if thy parent left it, let thy virtues deserve it; so shall thy honor be safer, better and cheaper.Francis Quarles
To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.Harriet Beecher Stowe
It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.Voltaire
Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.Johann von Goethe
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
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
The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.Rene Descartes
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.Ralph Waldo Emerson
God gives to every man virtue, temper, and understanding.William Coope
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, is to understand things by intuition.Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.Henry Kissinge
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.Samuel Butle
Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.Silius Italicus
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.Barry Goldwate
If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation.Xenophon
The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue would esteem nothing above it.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.Saint Thomas Aquinas
Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.Sir Francis Bacon, Of Adversity
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.Voltaire
Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.William Golding
Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.Alex Comfort
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.Evelyn Waugh, Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)
You must come to terms with your wholeself. the wholeness which exceeds all our virtue and all our vice.Ursula Le Guin
A weed is just a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.Cicero
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.Robert K. Merton
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.David Starr Jordan, The Philosophy of Despai
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.Jean - Jacques Rousseau
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.Barry Goldwate
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
When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.Charles Horton Cooley
