Top 100 True Virtue Quotes
#1. I used to suppose that certain evils could never befall a being in possession of a sound mind; that true virtue supplies us with energy which vice can never resist; that it was always in our power to obstruct, by his own death, the designs of an enemy who aimed at less than our lives.
Charles Brockden Brown
#2. True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits.
Julian Baggini
#3. If there could be . . . a cause determining a person to benevolence towards the whole world of mankind . . . exclusive of . . . love to God, . . . it cannot be of the nature of true virtue."42
John Piper
#4. Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
Francis Bacon
#5. True virtue, wheresoever it moves, still carries an intrinsic worth about it.
John Vanbrugh
#6. True virtue never looks so lovely as when it is most oppressed, and the divine excellence of real Christianity is never demonstrated as clearly as when it faces trials.
Jonathan Edwards
#7. There is nothing more glorious - nothing that does more honour to true virtue, than the confidence with which one approaches a friend of tried integrity.
Antoine Francois Prevost D'Exiles
#8. Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
John Dryden
#9. Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
Plato
#10. 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
#11. As all true virtue, wherever found, is a ray of the life of the All-Holy; so all solid knowledge, all really accurate thought, descends from the Eternal Reason, and ought, when we apprehend it, to guide us upwards to Him.
Henry Parry Liddon
#12. Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.
Confucius
#13. True virtue has no limits, but goes on and on, and especially holy charity, which is the virtue of virtues, and which having a definite object, would become infinite if it could meet with a heart capable of infinity.
Saint Francis De Sales
#14. The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel De Montaigne
#15. True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
Baruch Spinoza
#16. If the Bible didn't show us the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities , the sins of our heroes, we might have deep questions about their true virtue.
Baal Shem Tov
#17. True virtue, when she errs, needs not the eyes of men to excite her blushes; she is confounded at her own presence, and covered with confusion of face.
Jane Porter
#18. In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.
Baruch Spinoza
#19. The easy, gentle, and sloping path ... is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
Michel De Montaigne
#21. Appearances are there to be ignored, for the biggest hearts may reside in the smallest and unlikeliest of creatures. Those who fail to look beyond the surface will never encounter true virtue - not in others and certainly not in themselves.
Markus Heitz
#22. [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
#23. There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.
Tom Robbins
#24. We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
Seneca The Younger
#25. when the soul is transported, the only virtue lies in loving what you see (is that not true?), the supreme happiness in having what you have;
Umberto Eco
#26. Happiness does not fall out of the blue and dreams will not come true by themselves. We need to be down-to-earth and work hard. We should uphold the idea that working hard is the most honorable, noblest, greatest and most beautiful virtue.
Xi Jinping
#27. Pure love is giving without the mind of having given. This is true love, compassion and virtue.
Woo Myung
#28. We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary.
Jose Saramago
#29. It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.
Richard Henry Lee
#30. To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject.
Edmund Husserl
#31. Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.
Gottfried Leibniz
#32. 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
#33. A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong?
Ayn Rand
#34. If by saying that all men are born equal, you mean that they are equally born, it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences
David Eugene Edwards
#35. 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
#36. True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
Aristotle.
#37. Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#38. Virtue is the only and true nobility.
[Lat., Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.]
Juvenal
#39. It's true what they say about patience being a virtue; it just happens to be a virtue that I choose not to pursue.
Chelsea Handler
#40. but that it is only the writings and precepts of the philosophers and other fine writers that are the true riches, because they enrich with virtue the minds of those that possess them." Euthydemus
Xenophon
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. Consider your deepest, most secret desires for one moment. Ask yourself, "Where did this desire come from?" If the thought of fulfilling that desire brings you joy, then this is a clue that it is a true desire and your divine assignment. A
Doreen Virtue
#44. Vice, like virtue, Grows in small steps, and no true innocence Can ever fall at once to deepest guilt.
Jean Racine
#45. True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Alfred North Whitehead
#46. There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Henry Fielding
#47. To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court
Philip Sidney
#48. 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
#49. In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.
Saint Ignatius
#51. True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time; it should seem both necessary and free; in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#52. True humility is a kind of self-annihilation; and this is the centre of all virtues.
John Wesley
#53. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.
Plato
#54. Cicero said that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. If that's true, then my happiness does not cause me to be grateful for what I have. My gratitude for what I have causes me to be happy. Gratitude births the virtue of happiness.
Jennifer Dukes Lee
#55. Set your mind on beauty, love, and virtue. You will be blessed, great, pure, and true.
Debasish Mridha
#56. True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.
Martin Luther
#57. Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.
Maimonides
#58. True valor, on virtue founded strong, meets all events alike.
David Mallet
#59. It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.
C.S. Lewis
#60. If there is a God, there is a map. If God has a map, his map is the true map.
Peter Kreeft
#61. Let us not esteem worldly prosperity or adversity as things real or of any moment, but let us live elsewhere, and raise all our attention to Heaven; esteeming sin as the only true evil, and nothing truly good, but virtue which unites us to God.
Gregory Of Nazianzus
#62. Good art however "immoral" is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
Ezra Pound
#64. True happiness lies in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.
Marquis De Sade
#66. [W]ork at ridding yourself of the esteem you have had up to now for the glitter and sparkle of virtue and the vain applause of the world, which Our Lord so assiduously avoided and so often recommends us to shun, and that you labor in earnest to acquire true and solid virtues.
Vincent De Paul
#67. If the Wise be the happy man ... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. The pigment must be mixed with the tears of spinsters of good family, who must live long lives of impeccable virtue and die without ever having had a day of true happiness.
Susanna Clarke
#69. In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.
Marquis De Sade
#70. For the Christian there can be no social or political panaceas, no easy escapes from personal responsibility achieved by collectivising guilt or virtue. The true ends of temporal life lie beyond it, and, though the tyrannical State may diminish virtue, the benevolent State cannot procure it.
Margaret Thatcher
#71. Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.
Samuel Richardson
#72. In short, all things that please the natural man in this world, are, to a true Christian, only so many crosses and temptations, allurements of sin and snares of death, that continually exercise his virtue.
Johann Arndt
#73. I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.
William S. Burroughs
#75. One cannot conclude that there are no great saints just because no great miracles are worked. The true estimate of life, after all, lies in acts of virtue, not in the display of miracles. There are many, Peter, who without performing miracles, are not at all inferior to those who perform them.
Benet Tvedten
#76. True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men and women with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love.
David O. McKay
#77. If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it's own reward?
Marquis De Sade
#78. Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.
Bertrand De Jouvenel
#79. The divine element manifests itself (or show up) in man as well by his aptitude for science, than by his aptitude for virtue. True morality, true philosophy and true art are in their essence ("dans leur essence", Fr.) religious.
African Spir
#80. True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#81. One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay.
Franz Kafka
#82. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.
George Washington
#83. Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#84. A truthmaker is an entity in virtue of which the proposition it makes true is true. And it is a necessary condition of being a truthmaker (though not a sufficient one) that a truthmaker necessitates the proposition it makes true.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
#86. I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
Carl Sagan
#87. For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline: think on these things.
Anonymous
#88. A true woman of virtue is one who will socialize with every man on earth, and doesn't share her body with any of them.
Michael Bassey
#89. Hypocrisy a homage is true,
That vice pays to virtue,
Be man - himself so true,
That no false does he brew.
Munindra Misra
#90. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
John Maynard Keynes
#91. Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
Seneca The Younger
#92. Saying No gains you respect. When you say No, the other person may feel disappointed. But ultimately, they will respect you for taking good care of yourself. And most of all, you'll respect yourself because you are being true to yourself!
Doreen Virtue
#93. O son, thou hast not true humility, The highest virtue, mother of them all; But her thou hast not know; for what is this? Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
#94. One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou
#95. Your true self is a treasure of all divine virtues.
Ma Jaya
#96. Thought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain?
Thomas Carlyle
#97. Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead
#98. This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. (Hear, hear.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
#99. It is also true that the separate brain units, by
virtue of where they are placed in a system, contribute different
components to the system's operation and are thus not interchangeable.
Antonio R. Damasio
#100. Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.
Joseph Addison
