Virtue Quotes

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.

Confucius

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Abraham Lincoln

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Plutarch, Morals

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a great distance, not by virtue of any sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

Bernard of Chartres, 12th Century

The man who willeth to do well... we should extol his virtues and speak not of his faults behind his back.

Joseph Smith Jr.

Compulsion cannot produce virtue; it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue.

Dinesh D? Souza

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Cicero

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".

One path alone leads to a life of peace: The path of virtue.

Juvenal

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Joseph Addison

The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.

Socrates

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

Carl Sagan

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

Horace, Epistles

The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Brendan Francis Behan

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.

Mark Twain

To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue... They are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

The home is the chief school of human virtues.

William Ellery Channing

Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but I have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

Sterne

Nature does not loathe virtue it is unaware of its existence.

Franoise Mallet - Joris

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

Cicero

Virtue has its own reward, but no box office.

Mae West

Virtue is indeed its own reward.

Claudianus

In stirring up tumult and strife, the worst men can do the most, but peace and quiet cannot be established without virtue.

Cornelius Tacitus

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

Nikola Tesla

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

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Francis Quarles

There are very few women in society whose virtue outlasts their beauty.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales

Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which might have surprized a judicious person, who had observed the tranquillity with which she bore all the affronts to her chastity; but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of 8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

Ayn Rand