Top 100 Quotes About Human Virtue
#2. For everything divine and human, virtue, fame, and honor, now obey the alluring influence of riches.
Horace
#3. To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
Ayn Rand
#4. But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#5. The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.
Walter Savage Landor
#6. No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue.
Theodore Parker
#7. Seldom indeed does human virtue rise From trunk to branch.
Dante Alighieri
#8. Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.
Robert Frost
#9. [Women's] duty is nothing else than the fulfilment [sic] of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue.
Frances Power Cobbe
#10. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#11. What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing but an accident.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#12. Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.
Iris Murdoch
#13. What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#14. The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights; the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.
Roger Rosenblatt
#15. I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
Henry James
#16. Because different cultures see a particular animal as representing a certain human virtue or vice, the use of animal imagery also allows for more colorful commentary on the human condition.
Larry Herzberg
#17. With certain kinds of people,we allow for the potential development of all the beauties of human virtue within a faith that is different from our own
Victor Hugo
#18. The traditional Confucian structure that invoked ideals of perfect human virtue for harmony must incorporate the rule of law for the modern era.
Patrick Mendis
#19. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Ayn Rand
#20. Knowledge was the great thing
not abstract knowledge in which Dr. Forester had been so rich, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed, passionate, trivial human knowledge.
Graham Greene
#21. Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#22. Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.
Thomas Keneally
#23. Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
Ayn Rand
#24. If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue - and not a vice - to love myself, since I am a human being too.
Erich Fromm
#25. Virtue inside is the real value of human, if ldp cannot rule this country, of course our country not yet be cured. All LDP (League for Democracy Party) supporters must be clear this point.
Khem Veasna
#26. Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
Osamu Dazai
#27. When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.
E. Stanley Jones
#28. Should we act on our unseen fears before the virtue of human kindness? Who's given us more, the Light's faith or that stranger? And if you choose to reject generosity, then what standing do we have left in this world, or in the hereafter, for that matter?
Janny Wurts
#29. The human heart is evil, absolutely. That is why self-discipline is a virtue. Once you open the floodgates of corruption, there's no stopping it.
B.C. Chase
#30. In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane.
Yukichi Fukuzawa
#31. There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.
Tadeusz Borowski
#32. Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.
John Adams
#33. I've always been interested in our flaws as human beings, just as much as the virtues.
Nicole Kidman
#34. Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions.
Freya Stark
#35. Find joy in simplicity, self-respect, and indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow the divine.
Marcus Aurelius
#36. Everything, virtue, glory, honor, things human and divine, all are slaves to riches.
Horace
#37. Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.
Seneca The Younger
#38. We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
Edward Gibbon
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.
Confucius
#42. Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
#43. 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
#44. Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.
Jane Goodall
#45. In an era of human history in which we prize comfort above nearly every other virtue, we have overlooked an important truth: comfort never leads to excellence.
Jeff Goins
#46. The world couldn't heal as long as human beings were so determined to place gain over virtue, so determined to lead others to ruin down the wrong path.
Rosslyn Elliott
#47. Marriage is the preserver of the human race. Without it, the purposes of God would be frustrated; virtue would be destroyed to give place to vice and corruption, and the earth would be void and empty.
Joseph Fielding Smith
#48. You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?
Thomas A Kempis
#49. Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher - for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.
Cornel West
#50. We are human less by virtue of our ideal goals than by the vice of our inferiority.
James Hillman
#51. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#52. Integrity is the greatest commodity that pays the highest salary in any human endeavor. Integrity really pays
Michael Quansah
#53. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue.
Robert Wright
#54. Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.
Robert Charles Wilson
#55. Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth - yea, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning! A
Friedrich Nietzsche
#56. The evil that is in this world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that however isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue;
Albert Camus
#57. The rule for social witness is that faithfulness is a higher virtue than effectiveness. Some things ought indeed to be done regardless of whether by human calculations they promise to be effective; and other things ought not to be done, no matter how effective they may promise to be.
George Hunsinger
#58. The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
John Stuart Mill
#59. Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.
John Adams
#60. What is virtue? It is to hold yourself to your fullest development as a person and as a responsible member of the human community
Arthur Dobrin
#61. I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
#62. Human nature is so weak that the honest men who have no religion make me fret with their perilous virtue, as rope-dancers with their dangerous equilibrium.
Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis
#63. Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch
as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
Ambrose Bierce
#64. Having problems doesn't make you noble or virtuous, it makes you human. Nobility and virtue comes from the way that you handle your problems and either learn to move past them or live with them if out of your control.
Oli Anderson
#65. If you say that a good reputation serves to benefit the neighbor more, I admit that. However, since it should be based on a good life, it is, therefore, preserved by the practice of virtue and not by human intrigue.
Vincent De Paul
#66. If virtue were its own reward, it would no longer be a human quality, but supernatural.
Luc De Clapiers
#67. You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
William Blake
#68. Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history?
Dan Brown
#69. It is not in virtue of its liberty that the human will attains to grace, it is much rather by grace that it attains to liberty.
Saint Augustine
#70. What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.
Frederick William Robertson
#71. Because "we human beings are imaginative by nature, we cannot choose to live by the routine of the ant-heap. If deprived of the imagery of virtue" - imaginative depictions of the truly good life - "we will seek out the imagery of vice.
Russell Kirk
#72. The impression that you are a demigod worried me. I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.
Nelson Mandela
#73. Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government ... can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.
George Washington
#74. Do you think that, by nature, human beings are forgiving?" "I think that, by nature, human beings are self-protective," said Hanratty. "If it is in their interest to be forgiving, then they are. If not, then they are vengeful. I am fairly certain that being forgiving is not an innate virtue.
Betsy Carter
#75. It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.
John Adams
#76. I've always been a sucker for any technology engineered primarily for the entertainment of the human race - even such technology as has been disguised as 'useful' or 'improving' when we all know the real virtue lies in its ability to distract and divert.
Lynn Coady
#77. This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very
reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
#78. Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington
#79. In the modern world, human beings display little tolerance for waiting. We are addicted to fast food, instant messaging, and other conveniences of life. Patience is a lost virtue.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#80. Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
Rene Dubos
#81. The doctors snap at the nurses, who snap at the patient care assistants, who snap at the cleaners, who snap at the patients who are too sick to respond. Those at the bottom of the heap have no choice but to be good. No one can doubt the virtue of the helpless.
Jinat Rehana Begum
#82. I don't think virtue has a downside. I think human nature does ...
Catherine Brady
#84. Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
Epictetus
#85. In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity.
Brennan Manning
#86. If we lose our significance (character) we fall in ruin. The exploiters take over and sell freedom from fear, from guilt, from want. They excuse all corrupt actions. Collective status degenerates the human spirit.
Moxie Will
#87. Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#88. To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.
C.S. Lewis
#89. There are two restraints which God has laid upon human nature, shame and fear; shame is the weaker, and has place only in those in whom there are some reminders of virtue.
John Tillotson
#90. Conservatism vests in and depends on the widespread, informed understanding of human nature, self-governance and the First Principle of Progress: free people interacting in free markets produce the greatest good for the greatest number always, but only, when tethered to virtue and morality.
Mary Matalin
#91. Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to choose. For he who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse - and others will always choose for him.
Paulo Coelho
#93. Virtue does not spring from riches, but riches and all other human blessings, both private and public, from virtue.
Plato
#94. How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice. Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
Winston Churchill
#95. They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.
Geoffrey Wood
#96. When all the mysticism is stripped away, the people who comprise the government (the legislators, administrators, judges, and policemen), are guided by human interests, desires, beliefs, notions, and prejudices, just like other people. They have neither superhuman wisdom nor extraordinary virtue.
Hans F. Sennholz
#97. In some respects, if I had to choose just one (virtue on the spiritual path), I'd feel safest with a sense of humor. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, have a good laugh about human nature, and get on with our journeys.
Bo Lozoff
#98. In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
Os Guinness
#99. We would have to say that hereditary succession is harmful. You may say the king, having sovereign power, will not in that case hand over to his children. But it is hard to believe that: it is a difficult achievement, which expects too much virtue of human nature.
Aristotle.
#100. Virtue humanizes and spiritualizes what is part animal in us. Vice brutalizes what is human and spiritual in us.
Anthony Esolen
