Virtue Quotes

Without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.

Humility is a virtue; timidity is an illness.

In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice.

I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.

Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue and above reproach escapes me.

Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

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.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it.

Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

Heaven is author of the virtue that is in me

Those who make virtue their profession are the ruin of virtue.

Clever talk can confound the workings of virtue, just as small impatiences can confound great projects.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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.

For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.

People don't understand the virtue of time, until their clock stops ticking.

When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.

Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist.

Every vice has its excuse ready.

He who shall practice these twenty virtues shall become invincible in all his undertakings.

Virtue consists in fleeing vice.

Pride is both a virtue and a vice.

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.

It is by virtue of the atonement that God can maintain His justice and yet demonstrate His mercy.

How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue.

Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.

No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

The constant man loses not his virtue in misfortune. A torch may point towards the ground, but its flame will still point upwards.

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

[Women's] duty is nothing else than the fulfilment [sic] of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue.

Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.

Virtue alone is the unerring sign of a noble soul.

The fame which is based on wealth or beauty is a frail and fleeting thing; but virtue shines for ages with undiminished lustre.

To the eye of enmity virtue appears the ugliest blemish.