Top 33 Quotes About Moral Virtues
#1. The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
Joseph Addison
#2. The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
Aristotle.
#3. None of the moral virtues is engendered in us by nature, for no natural property can be altered by habit.
Aristotle.
#4. It is possible that the meaning of wisdom in Hebrew indicates aptitude for stratagems and the application of thought in such a way that the stratagems and ruses may be used in achieving either rational or moral virtues, or in achieving skill in a practical art, or in working evil and wickedness.
Maimonides
#5. 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 Joseph Emile Montegut
#6. Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its extraordinary material triumphs in our time are not to bring human history to an abrupt, unpleasant and discreditable end.
Arnold J. Toynbee
#7. There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people.
Geoff Mulgan
#8. Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#9. But the Spirit was not limited to doing surprising and extraordinary things. He was present in the Old Testament period in giving civil rule and government ... moral virtues ... physical strength ... and intellectual abilities.
John Owen
#10. Wisdom or intelligence and prudence are intellectual, liberality and temperance are moral virtues.
Aristotle.
#11. Again, Practical Wisdom and Excellence of the Moral character are very closely united; since the Principles of Practical Wisdom are in accordance with the Moral Virtues and these are right when they accord with Practical Wisdom.
Aristotle.
#12. To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well.
Samuel Johnson
#13. In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character.
Theodore Roosevelt
#14. Greatness of Soul seems therefore to be as it were a crowning ornament of the virtues; it enhances their greatness, and it cannot exist without them. Hence it is hard to be truly great-souled, for greatness of soul is impossible without moral nobility.
Aristotle.
#15. The sand-castle virtues are all swept away in the tidal destruction, the moral melee.
Jethro Tull
#16. I believe that you are really a very good husband but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.
Oscar Wilde
#17. Unless we suppress our conscience, we naturally know basic moral truths. General virtues and vices, Thomas Reid wrote, "must appear self-evident to every man who has a conscience, and has taken the pains to exercise this natural power of his mind" ("Of Morals").
Anonymous
#18. Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.
Aristotle.
#19. Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues.
Kenneth Minogue
#20. To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.
Michael Sandel
#21. It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.
Wendy Kaminer
#22. But what about love, compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence? Many people still imagine that religion is the true repository of these virtues. To change this, we must talk about the full range of human experience in a way that is as free of dogma as the best science already is.
Sam Harris
#23. Character is made up of core moral principles called the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, caring, fairness and citizenship. Each of these virtues are independently important but together they provide the foundation for a worthy life.
Michael Josephson
#24. How inestimably important in its moral results - and therefore how praiseworthy in itself - is the act of eating and drinking! The social virtues center in the stomach. A man who is not a better husband, father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking, an incurably vicious man.
Wilkie Collins
#25. Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
Ayn Rand
#26. The goal of parenting is to create self-sufficient virtues in children. Applying external pressure and punishments tends to teach them fear-based compliance rather than the internalization of moral standards.
Stefan Molyneux
#27. We need justice. We need toleration, honesty and moral courage. These are modern virtues without which we cannot hope to control the forces science has let loose among us.
I. A. R. Wylie
#28. A person is said to have good character when their habits, dispositions and conduct reflect a deep commitment to ethical virtues and moral principles.
Michael Josephson
#29. So what the hell's wrong with me?" Nyx eased off the marble slab.
"Besides your deviant moral flexibility and severe phobia of emotional commitment?" Yahfia asked.
"I consider those virtues," Nyx said.
Kameron Hurley
#30. Moral formation and the imitation of Christ are nothing new, even if their challenges must be taken up anew by each of us. The practices, disciplines, and virtues that shape good character have been part of the conversation in the Christian tradition for centuries.
David I. Smith
#31. And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#32. Jehovah was not a moral god. He had all the vices and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out all his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise.
Robert Green Ingersoll
