Top 100 Virtue And Happiness Quotes
#1. [T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists ... an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.
George Washington
#2. The more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#3. Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.
Ayn Rand
#5. 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
#6. Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
Ayn Rand
#7. Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked?
Sissela Bok
#8. Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.
Joseph Addison
#9. A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.
Aristotle.
#10. 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
#11. It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good not evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One never reaches happiness.
Henri Barbusse
#12. Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.
Aristotle.
#13. Associated with gratitude is virtue. I think they are related because he who is disposed to shun virtue lacks appreciation of life, its purposes, and the happiness and well-being of others.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#14. Your genuine happiness does not come from other people, activities or things, it comes from living a meaningful life - a life that is in alignment with your values and is beneficial.
John Bruna
#15. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
#16. Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus Aurelius
#17. Freemasonry is an establishment founded on the benevolent intention of extending and conferring mutual happiness upon the best and truest principles of moral life and social virtue.
Andrew Jackson
#18. It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.
Aristotle.
#19. 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
#20. True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
Aristotle.
#21. Do the meager pleasures you have been able to enjoy during your fall compensate for the torments which now rend your heart? Happiness therefore lies only in virtue,my child, and all the sophistries of its detractors can never procure a single one of its delights.
Marquis De Sade
#22. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.
Ayn Rand
#23. Appreciation is a great virtue, and if husbands and wives expressed it more frequently in our homes, wives would be happier, and husbands would probably be more kind (Gospel Ideals, p. 475).
David O. McKay
#24. Happiness and virtue rest upon each other; the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
#25. She looks very virtuous and very melancholy."
"Virtue is like the precious odors, most fragrant when it is crushed.
Emmuska Orczy
#26. 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
#27. Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever ... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.
Aristotle.
#28. In absolute and general perfection lies stifling monotony and death. Nature must have contrasts; she must have shadows as well as highlights; sorrow with happiness; both wrong and right; and sin as well as virtue.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#29. That is the secret of happiness and virtue
liking what you've got to do.
Aldous Huxley
#30. Only when there is virtue in souls can there be peace and happiness in society.
Peter Kreeft
#31. Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.
Aristotle.
#32. 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
#33. By declaring complete responsibility for being in your cocoon, and total responsibility for leaving. We become trapped when we avoid taking responsibility for the conditions in our lives. We're trapped further by blaming others for lack of fulfillment, success, and happiness.
Doreen Virtue
#34. Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.
Marquis De Sade
#35. Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.
Theodore Dalrymple
#37. The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#38. Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.
Aristotle.
#39. And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.
Aldous Huxley
#40. Set your mind on beauty, love, and virtue. You will be blessed, great, pure, and true.
Debasish Mridha
#41. To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for.
Henry Van Dyke
#42. That which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
David Hume
#43. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.
Allan Bloom
#44. 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
#45. We have broken down the self-respecting spirit of man with nursery tales and priestly threats, and we dare to assert, that inproportion as we have prostrated our understanding and degraded our nature, we have exhibited virtue, wisdom, and happiness, in our words, our actions, and our lives!
Frances Wright
#46. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
John Adams
#47. Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, Is the best gift of Heaven: a happiness That even above the smiles and frowns of fate Exalts great Nature's favourites: a wealth That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd.
John Armstrong
#48. The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.
Marcus Aurelius
#49. True happiness lies in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.
Marquis De Sade
#50. The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness.
Edward Abbey
#51. Recommend virtue to your children, that alone - not wealth - can give happiness. It upholds in adversity and the thought of it and my art prevents me from putting an end to my life.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
#52. Your everyday actions will define you and your virtue.
Debasish Mridha
#53. When I was a child ... Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.
Bertrand Russell
#54. 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
#55. The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue ... Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.
Edward Gibbon
#56. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
Ayn Rand
#57. Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
William S. Burroughs
#58. Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.
Blaise Pascal
#59. There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.
Chanakya
#60. What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of your greatest contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#61. There is a saying in Tibetan that "at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar". The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come with wealth, but from setting limits to one's desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.
Dalai Lama
#62. What is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time. Better, I think, to wish for her wisdom, a virtue not so fickle.
William Kent Krueger
#63. Happiness refers to feelings, virtue refers to actions, and those actions can cause those feelings. But not necessarily and not exclusively.
Daniel Gilbert
#64. If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
Epictetus
#65. All parents want their offspring to be exemplars of virtue and achievement and happiness. But most of all, we want desperately for you to be safe - safe from disease and violence and self-destruction.
Estelle Ramey
#66. Happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.
Aristotle.
#67. That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some little happiness resulting from this suffering which I have undergone and this virtue to which I have returned!
Victor Hugo
#68. Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
Samuel Johnson
#69. The Stoic makes no differentiation between a small act of kindness by a simple person and a great act of virtue from a learned sage. Virtue is virtue, and in both cases the result is happiness for the one who is virtuous.
Marcus Aurelius
#70. May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.
Abigail Adams
#71. This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.
Ayn Rand
#72. Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#73. Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care.
Jack Kornfield
#74. The happy man ... will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.
Aristotle.
#75. The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent of things, but be a part of personality [and character].
William Lyon Phelps
#76. Virtue is attended by more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the world. I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness.
David Hume
#77. I wish for you a life of wealth, health and happiness; a life in which you give to yourself the gift of patience, the virtue of reason, the value of knowledge, and the influence of faith in your own ability to dream about and achieve worthy rewards.
Jim Rohn
#78. The laws by which the Divine Ruler of the universe has decreed an indissoluble connection between public happiness and private virtue, whatever apparent exceptions may delude our short-sighted judgments, never fail to vindicate their supremacy and immutability.
William Cabell Rives
#79. Count all th' advantage prosperous Vice attains,
'Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want
which is, to pass for good.
Alexander Pope
#80. If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?
John Adams
#81. Happiness and Prosperity are now within our Reach; but to attain and preserve them must depend upon our own Wisdom and Virtue.
George Mason
#82. There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.
William Graham Sumner
#83. Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.
Valerie Solanas
#84. The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?
George Berkeley
#85. Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man - for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.
Ayn Rand
#86. The free society does not guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed: it has to be won through personal striving.
Dinesh D'Souza
#88. The happiness of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she is destined to become the safe and venerable asylum of virtue, of honesty, of tolerance, and quality and of peaceful liberty.
Marquis De Lafayette
#89. There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.
All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.
Ayn Rand
#90. Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.
Jeremy Collier
#91. Literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.
Amy Bloom
#92. I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering, that there is a sort of psychic economy, whereby if you embrace success, happiness and comfort, these things have to be paid for.
Hugh Laurie
#93. Colleges and universities do nothing to suggest that some ways of using your education are better than others. They do nothing, in other words, to challenge the values of a society that equates virtue, dignity, and happiness with material success.
William Deresiewicz
#94. I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson
#95. Virtue alone is happiness; all else
Is else, and without praise.
Thiruvalluvar
#96. But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimised - the question involuntarily arises - to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#97. I would advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were revealed from Heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine men were to perish, and only one of a thousand to survive and retain his liberty. One such freeman must possess more virtue, and enjoy more happiness, than a thousand slaves.
Samuel Adams
#98. Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#99. Said Candide to Cacambo:
My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more.
Voltaire
#100. Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.
Hosea Ballou
