Top 100 Quotes About Virtue
#1. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
John Milton
#2. Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.
Lucan
#3. The lens freezes time and space in what may be an optical slavery or, contrarily, the crystallization of meaning. The limits of the lens' vision are esthetically often a virtue.
Berenice Abbott
#4. Virtue is not vouchsafed to a soul unless that soul has been trained and taught, and by unremitting practice brought to perfection.
Seneca.
#5. A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition; virtue therefore must be one of these three things.
Aristotle.
#6. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#7. In order to be effective you need not only virtue but also mental strength.
Aristotle.
#8. Peace is the soft and holy shadow that virtue casts.
Josh Billings
#9. A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.
John Jay Chapman
#11. There is in us more of the appearance of sense and virtue than of the reality.
Margaret Of Valois
#12. Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.
John Ridley
#13. I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.
A.S. Byatt
#14. Let them (the wicked) see the beauty of virtue, and pine at having forsaken her.
[Lat., Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.]
Aulus Persius Flaccus
#16. What all this adds up to is the view that nature is there as a resource to be used by man for his self-interest and profit. But, frugality being a virtue, the resource should be "conserved" as much as possible.
George Lakoff
#17. 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
#18. When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.
Lao-Tzu
#19. In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.
William Penn
#20. Patriotism is understood to be that virtue which consists in serving one's country; but in what way is this 'Patria' or country served by slaying its able bodied men in thousands?
Marie Corelli
#21. Truth suffers no loss if a vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them.
Friedrich Schiller
#22. An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.
Frances Wright
#23. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded:
Charlotte Bronte
#24. Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it's clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren't very virtuous.
Alex Tabarrok
#25. God doesn't want your careful virtue, He wants your reckless generosity.
Francis Spufford
#26. In that moment, Lux felt complete for the first time. He hadn't even realized anything was missing until he met her, but now, with her curled up in his arms, her hair tickling against his chin, he couldn't imagine existing without her - Virtue - A Fairy Tale
Amanda Hocking
#27. Through true honestydeeply believethat all sentient-beings are one.That all beings have the sametrue nature,wisdom,virtue.
Gautama Buddha
#28. Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.
Ian McEwan
#29. I take it that computational processes are both symbolic and formal. They are symbolic because they are defined over representations, and they are formal because they apply to representations, in virtue of (roughly) the syntax of the representations.
Jerry Fodor
#30. The principle virtue of anyone who made an important invention is curious persistence.
Debasish Mridha
#31. Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none
John Milton
#32. Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue.
Aristotle.
#33. Vice, virtue - it's best not to be too moral. You'll cheat yourself out of too much life.
Ruth Gordon
#34. The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.
John Adams
#35. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
J. William Fulbright
#36. He delighted in writing, in the joinery and embellishment of his sentences, in the consciousness of high rare virtue when every word had been used in its purest and most precise sense, in the kitten games of syntax and rhetoric. Words could do anything except generate their own meaning.
Evelyn Waugh
#37. Patience, Abigail. Patience."
Abigail snorted. "Patience, right. I am known for having a great handle on the Fruits of the Spirit."
"Interesting. I don't recall manipulation being a Biblical virtue.
Rachel Van Dyken
#38. Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.
Edmund Husserl
#39. Fear could never make virtue.
Voltaire
#40. What tender force, what dignity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature; around that neck what dross are gold and pearl!
Edward Young
#41. Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began. Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings lean'd to Virtue's side.
Oliver Goldsmith
#42. So much greater is our thirst for glory than for virtue.
Juvenal
#43. He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.
Samuel Johnson
#44. JFK's great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.
Michael Dobbs
#45. To acquire and preserve the virtue of chastity, we have need of a good and experienced confessor.
Philip Neri
#46. Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.
John Dryden
#47. There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless "law" is equated with justice and "order" with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#48. For there is a virtue in truth; it has an almost mystic power. Like radium, it seems to give off forever and ever grains of energy, atoms of light.
Virginia Woolf
#49. I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor shades confined to the Euclidean prison that is sanity
Grant Morrison
#50. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.
Harper Lee
#51. Even though one is well advanced in virtue, should he stop mortifying himself, he soon would lose his modesty and virtue - just as fertile soul quickly becomes dry and arid and produces nothing but thorns and thistles if it is not cultivated.
John Climacus
#52. A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.
- Must I Paint You a Picture
Billy Bragg
#53. The sun alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty (of moving the planets) and worthy to become the home of God himself.
Johannes Kepler
#54. The art of getting riches consists very much in thrift. All men are not equally qualified for getting money, but it is in the power of every one alike to practice this virtue.
Benjamin
#55. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
William Shakespeare
#56. I should like to enflame the whole world with my taste for gardening. There is no virtue that I would not attribute to the man who lives to project and execute gardens.
Michel, 14th Prince Of Ligne
#57. Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
#58. Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#59. We hate virtue when it is safe; when removed from our sight we diligently seek it.
Horace
#60. Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.
James Gibbons
#61. Gratitude is a virtue which, according to the general apprehension of mankind, approaches more nearly than almost any other social virtue to justice.
Samuel Parr
#62. Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.
Horace
#63. People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.
L.M. Montgomery
#64. Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths.
William Shakespeare
#65. The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.
Theodore Roosevelt
#66. In strength, the fear of enemies, In beauty, the fear of old age, In knowledge, the fear of defeat, In virtue, the fear of scandal, In the body, the fear of death. In this life all is fraught with fear: Renunciation alone is fearless. (In Search of God and
Swami Vivekananda
#67. Spontaneously to God should turn the soul, Like the magnetic needle to the pole; But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge, Fresh from St. Andrew's College, Should nail the conscious needle to the north?
Thomas Hood
#69. Watergate is the great liberal illusion that you can have public virtue without private morality.
Clare Boothe Luce
#70. What we're fighting against isn't an out-and-out vice. It's an overgrown, perverted virtue.
Jared Taylor
#71. We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#72. The definition of Brevity: That which people believe would be a virtue - in me!
Greg Curtis
#73. Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
Edmund Burke
#75. When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.
Immanuel Kant
#76. The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.
Bertrand Russell
#77. There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue, and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.
Mark Twain
#78. Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.
Kingsley Amis
#79. Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
Will Durant
#80. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.
Francis Bacon
#81. The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.
Toni Morrison
#82. Every nation-state tends towards the imperial - that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top.
Daniel Berrigan
#83. The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.
Joseph Addison
#84. We must give alms. Charity wins souls and draws them to virtue.
Angela Merici
#85. The gospel teaches us that true beauty is more than skin-deep. A young woman whose countenance is aglow with both happiness and virtue radiates inner beauty.
Lynn G. Robbins
#86. He became ... the ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work ... doing everything with simplicity and dignity, for he seemed to realize that his objective added nobility to everything he did.
Honore De Balzac
#87. Virtue is what happens when habitual choices have been wise.
N. T. Wright
#88. The wisdom to be on the throne of one's life must surpass the wisdom of the one being ruled, otherwise I will squander the whole of my life in the most appalling ways. By virtue of that reality, I would be wise to get out of the chair and invite God to have a seat.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#89. True vice, my lady, would frighten us all, if it did not wear the mask of virtue. (p.56)
Emery Lee
#90. The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.
Aristotle.
#91. For every virtuous man, there are ten thousand worshipers of virtue.
Jeffrey Fry
#92. Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue;
Aristotle.
#93. RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries .
Ambrose Bierce
#96. Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
John Dryden
#97. Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,
I mean good-nature,
are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
John Dryden
#98. I go by the great republican principle, that the people will have the virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom [to the offices of government].
James Madison
#99. There is a place within each of us where we cannot hide from the truth, where virtue sits as judge. To admit the truth of our actions is to go before that court, where process is irrelevant. Good and evil are intents, and intent is without excuse.
R.A. Salvatore
#100. Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.
Samuel Johnson
