Top 100 Good Virtue Quotes
#1. While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.
Rajneesh
#3. There is no such thing as Good: virtue is simply one of the many faces of terror ... terror of God's judgement, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake
Paulo Coelho
#4. I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It's a learned affectation.
Maya Angelou
#5. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.
John Steinbeck
#6. [I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.
Edward Abbey
#7. There is no part of the whole course of our Saviour Christ's life or death, but it is well worthy our looking on; and from each part in it there goeth virtue to do us good.
Lancelot Andrewes
#8. All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#9. I have known good and evil, sin and virtue, right and wrong; I have judged and been judged; I have passed through birth and death, Joy and sorrow, heaven and hell; And in the end I realized that I AM in everything and everything is in me.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#10. Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.
Bernard De Mandeville
#11. of light and life, thou Good Supreme! O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself! Save me from folly, vanity, and vice, From every low pursuit; and fill my soul With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure; Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
Benjamin Franklin
#12. Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment.
Oliver Goldsmith
#13. Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#14. It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way
Louisa May Alcott
#15. The good old home habits of our ancestors are breaking up - it will be well if our virtue and our freedom do not follow them!
Lydia Maria Francis Child
#16. The virtue of imagination has this in common with the virtue of courage. Without it, you are less good: with it, you are not necessarily better.
Pamela Frankau
#17. Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.
Alexander Pope
#18. To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.
Hannah More
#19. The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
Plutarch
#20. [priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
David Hume
#21. Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong."
Mark Stevenson
#22. But as to women, who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy with their estate has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love, their virtue, beauty, education, but form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.
Lord Byron
#23. Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good.
To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814
Thomas Jefferson
#24. We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.
Agatha Christie
#25. It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good not evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One never reaches happiness.
Henri Barbusse
#27. When good thing are accomplished, it does not claim (or name) them. This is Te, which is close in meaning to power or virtue. It is something within a person, and it is enhanced by following the Tao, or 'that from which nothing can deviate'.
Laozi
#28. Those who preached faith, or in other words a pure mind, have always produced more popular virtue than those who preached good acts, or the mere regulation of outward works.
James Mackintosh
#30. The worst evil is that most subtle evil. It is the evil that is merely 'base' which is more evil than evil itself. For it is the one closest to righteousness, the one indistinguishable and doused in virtue.
Criss Jami
#31. The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.
Aristotle.
#32. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
#33. Our genuine happiness comes from doing things we feel good about, not from doing things that make us feel good.
John Bruna
#35. The glorious chariots of kings wear out, and the body wears out and grows old; but the virtue of the good never grows old.
Gautama Buddha
#36. It is most true, that Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be true, and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great objects of every good Mason.
Albert Pike
#37. Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
Patrick Henry
#38. Tantra says be real, be authentic to yourself. Your happiness is not bad; it is good. It is not sin! Only sadness is sin, only to be miserable is sin. To be happy is virtue because a happy person will not create unhappiness for others. Only a happy person can be a ground for others' happiness.
Rajneesh
#39. I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.
Benjamin Franklin
#40. Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
Buddha
#41. My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.
Thomas Jefferson
#42. I believe that communal admiration of individuals is healthy for society. It facilitates, in one way, the base of our universal standard, morals, but also publicly espouses the virtue of certain practices that are kind of like 'inherently good' in some kind of ideas of what the good is.
Jack Gleeson
#43. If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well.
Confucius
#44. If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ... Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson
#45. Be sure that you think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8.
Joseph Murphy
#46. If it were given to a man to see virtue's reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue.
John Of The Cross
#47. A good rule to remember in complimenting people is this: people are more pleased at a compliment if you praise them for some virtue that is not glaringly obvious.
Leslie T. Giblin
#48. This is the greatest good to man, to discourse daily on virtue, and other things which you have heard me discussing, examining both myself and others,
Plato
#49. Loving your homeland is just as natural as loving your father or mother - after all, your country nourishes you, protects you, and in many ways makes you who you are. Just as it's a virtue to honor your parents, it's a good and admirable thing to honor the land you call home.
William Bennett
#50. In a darkening world where the shadows of violence, political expediency, materialism and junk culture grow ever longer, sport as it is practised by its good pros remains a bastion of decency, a place where virtue is rewarded and cheating exposed.
Eamon Dunphy
#51. Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. 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 a species of vice.
Thomas Paine
#52. Are there not thousands who have loved virtue who did not accept Jesus Christ in any supernatural or miraculous fashion, who, if they knew of him at all, knew of him only as the Nazarene peasant - the man Jesus. Such was Abraham Lincoln, the tender prophet of the gospel of good will upon earth.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
#54. There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature divers seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which, being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do, by common experience, thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness.
Isaac Barrow
#55. One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.
George Santayana
#56. I have asked myself if the best which can be done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked will still wander free, then alas for the world! Alleyne
Arthur Conan Doyle
#57. What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?
George Eliot
#58. The Existence of Deity, that he made the World, and govern'd it by his Providence; that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be punished and Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter ...
Benjamin Franklin
#59. An industrious mother is an initiator of a good course; always charting new course for her loved ones.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
#60. Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha
#61. While the soul is in mortal sin, nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue.
Saint Teresa Of Avila
#62. In the ignorant state, there is a 'limit' for good qualities, it is known as the self-pride. Self-serving pride (swa-maan) is the limit of virtues in the realm of ignorance.
Dada Bhagwan
#63. In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
Paul Elmer More
#64. Beauty and virtue: the most kissable ass in the world is no guarantee of good intentions.
Mason Cooley
#65. The good hate sin because they love virtue.
[Lat., Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore.]
Horace
#66. Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
Paul Gauguin
#67. You wanted to live," he says.
"You say that like it's a good thing. A virtue."
"What is it really?"
I think about this. "Selfish."
"Wanting to live is selfish?"
"Yes.
Stephanie Kuehn
#68. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.
Ayn Rand
#69. I have pondered on the causes of a life's shipwreck. I think that our lives are worse than the mind's quality would warrant. There are many who know virtue. We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can't bring it to achievement.
Euripides
#70. Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?
Epictetus
#71. Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?
Plato
#72. I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.
Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos
#73. We very often fail to think as carefully about helping others as we could, mistakenly believing that applying data and rationality to a charitable endeavor robs the act of virtue. And that means we pass up opportunities to make a tremendous difference.
William MacAskill
#74. Intelligence, like fire, is a power that is neither good nor bad in itself but rather takes its virtue, its moral coloring, from its application.
Roger Kimball
#75. One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.
Neel Burton
#76. Tolerance is that important but subordinate virtue by which, instructed in our own weakness, we bear with what is bad without pretending that it is good. We bear with it provisionally, even if sometimes there is nothing we can do about it or ever will be able to do about it. It
Anthony Esolen
#77. There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness.
Philip Sidney
#78. Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, then do not be ashamed to stammer about it. Then speak and stammer: "This is my good, I love this, thus I like it entirely, thus alone do I want the good. I
Friedrich Nietzsche
#79. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, calling it God. So do they with their won evil, calling it the Devil.
Maria McCann
#80. Suspicion is a virtue as long its object is the preservation of public good
Patrick Henry
#81. It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
#82. Gratitude is a Beautiful Virtue but don't get offended when ingratitude is shown or your good deeds.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
#83. Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.
Aristotle.
#84. Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
Juvenal
#85. We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.
Michel De Montaigne
#86. It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Aristotle.
#87. To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha
#88. We now reflexly, and dishonestly, unmask all virtue as hypocritical, all beauty as Kitsch; and have become so jaded with simplicity and wholesomeness that we find Good insipid and crave the sharp stimulus of sin.
Bruce G. Charlton
#89. If one person in a group of ten is missing the tip of his little finger, I will notice it almost immediately. This extreme attention to visual detail is not a virtue, just a fact of my person. It happens seemingly involuntarily and strikes me as neither good nor bad.
Rosemary Mahoney
#90. Shall ignorance of good and ill Dare to direct the eternal will? Seek virtue, and of that possest, To Providence resign the rest.
John Gay
#91. I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
A.S. Byatt
#92. Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.
Seneca The Younger
#93. If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?
Chanakya
#94. The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#95. Virtue is not photogenic, so I liked playing bad guys. But, whenever I played a bad guy, I tried to find something good in him, and that kept my contact with the audience.
Kirk Douglas
#96. There's a little known virtue called magnificence: an unostentatious liberality of expenditure in doing good. You would deny me the practice of it. Mierda! I should have left you on the comet.
Julian May
#97. A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.
Susan Sontag
#98. Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue; the good become the slaves of the wicked; might makes right; fear silences the power of the law.
Seneca The Younger
#99. The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
Edmund Burke
#100. If I were to ever have enough material or the philosophical mind to write a book about what a good life ought to be, my thesis would be simply this: A good life is one that has managed to turn anxiety into hope, and fear into success. And that is what I call total virtue.
Mohammed Naseehu Ali