Quotes about virtue

Great necessities call out great virtues.

— Abigail Adams

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

— Joseph Addison

A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.

— Minna Antrim

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

— Aristotle

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

— Aristotle

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

— Aristotle

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

— Francis Bacon

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

— Natalie Clifford Barney

There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.

— Charles Baudelaire

But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints. [Ephesians 5:3]

— Bible

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. [Galatians 5:23, 24]

— Bible

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.

— Elizabeth Blackwell

The highest virtue found in the tropics is chastity, and in the colder regions, temperance.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.

— Francis H. Bradley

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

— Edmund Burke

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

— William S. Burroughs

If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.

— George Bush

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

— Samuel Butler

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

— Samuel Butler

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

— Samuel Butler

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

— Albert Camus

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.

— Thomas Carlyle

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

— Winston Churchill

Virtue is its own reward.

— Marcus T. Cicero

We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.

— Alexander Comfort

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.

— Confucius

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

— Confucius

I have never seen a man as fond of virtue as of women.

— Confucius

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

— Edward Dahlberg

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

— Denis Diderot

Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtues grave.

— Augustine J. Duganne

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

— Isadora Duncan

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The virtue in most request is conformity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.

— Benjamin Franklin

Be generous, good and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.

— Billy Boy Franklin

Virtue is the only true nobility.

— Thomas Fuller

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.

— David Hare

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

— William Hazlitt

There is no substitute for virtue. Keep your thoughts virtuous. Rise above the filth that's all around you in this world and stand tall in strength and virtue. You can do this and you will be happier for it for as long as you live. God bless you in cherishing, developing and holding on to this great gift, the quality of personal virtue.

— Gordon B. Hinckley

Why does a virtuous man take delight in the landscapes? Because the din of the dusty world and the locked-in-ness of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors; while on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find.

— Kuo His

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

— Horace

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

— Edgar Watson Howe

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

— Samuel Johnson

Virtue is too often merely local.

— Samuel Johnson

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

— Samuel Johnson

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.

— David Starr Jordan

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.

— Carl Jung

You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?

— Thomas Kempis

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

— Lao-Tzu

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

— Walter Lippmann

The first time you see Winston Churchill you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues.

— Lady Constance Lytton

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.

— Don Marquis

Virtue that wavers is not virtue.

— John Milton

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

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Virtue is the strongest shield.

— Motto

Virtue is a sure anchor.

— Motto

Virtue alone is invincible.

— Motto

Virtue survives the grave.

— Motto

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

— Iris Murdoch

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.

— Jawaharlal Nehru

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

— Cardinal J. Newman

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

— Laurence Hope Nicolson

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

— William Penn

If we had to seek virtue outside of ourselves, that would assuredly be difficult; but as it is within us, it suffices to avoid bad thoughts and to keep our souls turned toward the Lord.

— Philokalia

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

— Plato

Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.

— Alexander Pope

With virtue you can't be entirely poor; without virtue you can't really be rich.

— Chinese Proverb

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth.

— English Proverb

Virtue is harmony.

— Pythagoras

Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.

— Will Rogers

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Ah, Eug?nie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?

— Marquis De Sade

The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

— Sallust

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

— Friedrich Schlegel

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

— William Shakespeare

Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues we write in water.

— William Shakespeare

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.

— George Bernard Shaw

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

— George Bernard Shaw

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

— George Bernard Shaw

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

— Adam Smith

Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues.

— Heinrich Suso

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

— Jonathan Swift

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

— Henry David Thoreau

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

— Henry David Thoreau