Top 100 Quotes About The Virtues
#1. Now the soul of man is divided into two parts, one of which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle in itself, is able to obey such a principle. And we call a man in any way good because he has the virtues of these two parts.
Aristotle.
#2. If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.
Lionel Trilling
#3. In many ways, each of us is the sum total of what our ancestors were. The virtues they had may be our virtues, their strengths our strengths, and, in a way, their challenges could be our challenges.
James E. Faust
#4. The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtues consistently.
Maya Angelou
#5. He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.
John Steinbeck
#6. We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
William Hazlitt
#7. Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America.
Theodore Roosevelt
#8. I am now the site of an unmistakable sag ... With fancy holographic belt buckles do I attempt to restrain my stampeding softness. In vain ... My only virtues, as a physical specimen, are my sideburns, which are like the pelts of rare woodland animals. My sideburns are not to be ignored.
Rick Moody
#9. [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
#10. From when you are young, through middle age, you must grow to the point that you glow, so that your light lets people feel the blessings, the virtues, and the happiness.
Harbhajan Singh Yogi
#11. The trouble with Austin was that he believed so deeply in the chivalrous virtues that he found it impossible to refer to them.
Dorothy Dunnett
#12. At least some of the items in a Homeric list of the aretai would clearly not be counted by most of us nowadays as virtues at all, physical strength being the most obvious example.
Alasdair MacIntyre
#13. Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.
Alexander Pope
#14. Small faults and virtues are for daily life. The big ones are for emergencies.
Mason Cooley
#15. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Henry David Thoreau
#16. I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people's virtues.
Freya Stark
#17. The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtues. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the' conquering that gives a hero his title to renown.
Elias Lyman Magoon
#18. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England what she is.
Oscar Wilde
#19. Teaching has its virtues, but it is often bad for the teacher.
David Sirlin
#20. What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.
E. M. Forster
#21. Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
Steven Pressfield
#22. We imperatively require a perception of and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#23. I would never want any prayer that would not make the virtues grow within me.
Teresa Of Avila
#24. Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.
Confucius
#26. The romance genre is the only genre where readers are guaranteed novels that place the heroine at the heart of the story. These are books that celebrate women's heroic virtues and values: courage, honor, determination and a belief in the healing power of love.
Jayne Ann Krentz
#27. while modernity is not Christianity, modernity is the product of a Christian civilization. Lately the defects of modernity have been made plain to us while its virtues have been taken for granted.
John Mark Reynolds
#28. Let us keep a firm grip upon our money, for without it the whole assembly of virtues are but as blades of grass.
Bhartrhari
#29. Perfection consists in a constant perseverance to acquire the virtues and become proficient in their practice, because on God's road, not to advance is to fall back since man never remains in the same condition.
Vincent De Paul
#30. People in every nation behave and respond according to the values and virtues upon which they were raised. We all are a product of our environment.
Sunday Adelaja
#31. William McKinley has left us a priceless gift in the example of a useful and pure life, in his fidelity to public trusts and in his demonstration of the value of kindly virtues that not only ennoble but lead to success.
Grover Cleveland
#32. The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#33. If you are a true Christian ... you will reveal through your daily life the fruit of the Spirit ... and all the other Christian virtues which round out a Christlike personality.
Billy Graham
#34. College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had awakened her to the fact that she wanted more.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#37. If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless.
Moliere
#38. A graceful heart is a virtue of the meek.
Suzy Kassem
#39. Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.
Michael Crichton
#40. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives.
Oscar Wilde
#41. Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.
Alec Guinness
#42. He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]
Winston S. Churchill
#43. That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.
James Jones
#45. Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.
Aristotle.
#46. Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), whose Egyptian museum in San Jose took up an entire city block. It stressed the virtues of reason and science while also suggesting that ancient Egyptian wisdom would allow its followers to re-lease the hidden powers inherent in man.
George Pendle
#48. Love is higher than the Highest. Love is greater than the Greatest. Yea, it is in a certain sense greater than God; while yet, in the highest sense of all, God is Love, and Love is God. Love being the highest principle is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth.
Jakob Bohme
#49. As long as matters are really hopeful," wrote Chesterton, "hope is mere flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.
Eugene H. Peterson
#50. Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.
Richard J. Foster
#51. Modesty and reverence are no less virtues of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit neither to arrogance nor to servility.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#52. The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be, all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
Socrates
#53. The true God has never yet smiled upon a person for his charity or virtues, but only for the sake of Christ's merits.
Martin Luther
#54. To be pleased at correction and reproofs shows that one loves the virtues which are contrary to those faults for which he is corrected and reproved. And, therefore, it is a great sign of advancement in perfection.
Saint Francis De Sales
#55. It continues to defy explanation why liberals who theoretically love liberty, equality, tolerance and moderation, should find so much to despise in their own country, which represents the fullest expression of those virtues anywhere on the globe.
Mona Charen
#56. All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#57. The virtues developed here in the age range [around the age of 2] of are trust or faith, and will power and self determination according to the Erickson model. The existential questions being addressed here in this stage are, can one trust the world? and, is it alright to be myself?
Leviak B. Kelly
#58. In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,
fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.
Henry David Thoreau
#59. Wealth without pride is the way of the great sage.
Akinari Ueda
#60. Aesthetic culture is not the high-road to all the virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been known to infest it. Neither, on the other hand, is there any special grace in ugliness. Art is only utterance. It must express something; and the vital question is, what does it express?
Lewis Foreman Day
#61. Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution. The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!
Fidel Castro
#62. The universe is all about balance. The forces of light and darkness are meant to keep a check on one another. If one becomes too powerful and starts overrunning the other, that balance will be upset. For the tyranny of virtue is as unbearable as the stranglehold of vice.
Shatrujeet Nath
#63. Virtues are the internal qualities that allow us to be our best selves and enable us to lead complete and fulfilling lives.
Jonathan V. Last
#64. Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#65. Modern religious teaching have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.
Josef Pieper
#66. Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
G.K. Chesterton
#67. Faith and patience are exceptional virtues in those that suffer. Patience is the fruit and evidence of faith.
John Calvin
#68. One of the great virtues of Confucianism was its suppleness. Western political thought tended to be rather brittle; as soon as the state became corrupt, everything ceased to make sense. Confucianism always retained its equilibrium, like a cork that could float as well in spring water or raw sewage.
Neal Stephenson
#69. The good man shuns evil and follows good; he keeps secret that which ought to be hidden; he makes his virtues manifest to all; he does not forsake one in adversity; he gives in season: such are the marks of a worthy friend.
Bhartrhari
#70. Many of us overvalue autonomy, the strength to stand alone, the capacity to act independently. Far too few of us pay attention to the virtues of dependence and interdependence, and especially to the capacity to be vulnerable.
William Sloane Coffin
#71. Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#72. That future depends on the values of self-government, our sense of duty, loyalty, self-confidence and regard for the common good. We are a diverse country, and getting more diverse. And these virtues are what keep this great country together.
Jeff Miller
#73. Perseverance is the master impulse of the firmest souls, the discipline of the noblest virtues, and the guaranty of acquisitions the most invigorating in their use and inestimable in their worth.
Elias Lyman Magoon
#74. The camel has his virtues - so much at least must be admitted; but they do not lie upon the surface.
Amelia B. Edwards
#75. The Peace Corps represents some, if not all, of the best virtues in this society. It stands for everything that America has ever stood for. It stands for everything we believe in and hope to achieve in the world.
Sargent Shriver
#76. Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues.
Brother Lawrence
#77. The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to contruct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the otherslike a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.
Jorge Luis Borges
#78. Leadership experts and the public alike extol the virtues of transformational leaders - those who set out bold objectives and take risks to change the world. We tend to downplay 'transactional' leaders, whose goals are more modest, as mere managers.
Joseph Nye
#79. And what more should I say since it expels the whole host of the virtues from the chamber of the human heart and introduces every barbarous vice as if the bolts of the doors were pulled out.
Peter Damian
#80. Every creative act, however small, enriches our species and the world around us. To find and nurture talent, is to be truly wealthy.
Stewart Stafford
#81. Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
William Butler Yeats
#82. Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?
Elie Wiesel
#83. Chinese culture has a lot of virtues that are tremendously valuable to not only us as Asian-Americans, but also the world in general.
Martin Yan
#84. Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity
Vladimir Nabokov
#86. 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
#87. that you have three of the most important virtues a policeman can have," he thought. "You are stubborn and logical, and completely calm.
Maj Sjowall
#89. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.
Harold Macmillan
#90. To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them!
Dorothy Day
#91. Persistence is the virtue by which all other virtues bear fruit.
Arturo Graf
#92. For as long as I could remember, he had never worn a single piece of clothing that could be considered casual. Khaki shorts and golf shirts, to Umberto, were the garments of men who have no virtues left, not even shame.
Anne Fortier
#93. There's an admirable belief about the virtues of meritocracy - that the best ideas prove the best results. It's a wrong and misguided belief by well-intentioned people.
Mitch Kapor
#94. The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others
existences which the spirit alone remembers, for matter has no memory for spiritual things.
Honore De Balzac
#96. You see, as I go along, I've come to consider bravery as just about the most pernicious of virtues. Bravery is a horrible thing. The human race has it left over from the animal world and we can't get rid of it.
James Jones
#97. Lying is wrong. When you tell a lie for the sake of sparing someone's feelings it is not suddenly right, but it is compassionate. And is not compassion a form of love? Love - the greatest of all virtues! So, my darling, I do wrong for you. I lie that you might feel loved.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#98. Consider it the greatest of all virtues to restrain the tongue.
Cato The Younger
#99. High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#100. It was one of the ferryman's greatest virtues that, like few people, he knew how to listen.
Hermann Hesse
