Virtue Quotes

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

~ Alexander Pope

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.translation (non-literal):O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher of virtues and expeller of vices! Just a single day lived well and according to your lessons is to be preferred to an eternity of errors.— Cicero, As quoted in Ben Franklin’s Autobiography

~ Benjamin Franklin

Virtues should not be seen as a medium to please others, else, they'll always fall short. They should, first, be a medium of self-edification.

~ Ufuoma Apoki

The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn’t matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we may stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God.

~ Mark Helprin

Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell.

~ Seneca

The piety, the gentleness, the honesty, the sensitivity, all the qualities she has learned to admire in herself, are invitations to violence; all her life, she has been groomed for the slaughterhouse. And though she is virtuous, she does not know how to do good.

~ Angela Carter

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Any woman of virtue won't be easy to come by. She will make you jump over hurdles to reach her.

~ Shannon L. Alder

One is punished most for one’s virtues.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Justine's virtue, in action, is the liberal lie in action, a good heart and an inadequate methodology.

~ Angela Carter

New York, I thought, was a city defined by its flaws. In every possible way, its virtues were overwhelmed by its vices, as Jekyll was by Hyde. Yet it was these very vices that gave the city its character - like tar in an oak barrel lending its flavor to Scotch.

~ Miles Watson

No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.

~ John Chrysostom

It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way

~ Louisa May Alcott

I think virtue is the quintessence of perfection, and the One who created it definitely stands beyond that value. Virtues like honesty, loyalty and courtesy, do not have to be completely defined by their relation to extrinsic things. Even if they are not realized by actions, their good value remains. Thus, it is not the end of virtue that I fear, but the end of me. What kind of person will I become without righteousness, for instance? I may not even be able to define myself.

~ Aishah Madadiy

WoyzeckYes, Captain, virtue! That I haven't figured out yet. I'm just a poor guy. The likes of us are wretched in this world and the next. If we ever got to heaven, we'd have to help make the thunder.

~ Georg Büchner

Any virtue can be taken too far.

~ Max Wirestone

If a nation succeeds in making her people strong in virtues, then the nation is rich already.

~ Sunday Adelaja

People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.

~ L.m. Montgomery

She would grace his home with her charm and beauty and she would make his bed joyous, all without ever having to shame his hearth with another man's memory of her shamelessness.

~ Dorothy West

Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.

~ John Milton

Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than they sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.

~ John Milton

Such is the joy of concluding a day performing duties earnestly leaving ends upon His feet! I have nothing to gain here except virtues, nothing to lose except love, O Lord, I am here to breathe the beauty of life!

~ Preeth Nambiar

Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor.

~ Jerome K. Jerome

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

~ Ayn Rand

I have pondered on the causes of a life's shipwreck. I think that our lives are worse than the mind's quality would warrant. There are many who know virtue. We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can't bring it to achievement.

~ Euripides

It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch's wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself—either an Emperor or an idiot.

~ Robert Graves

You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running.

~ Ayn Rand

It is not our religion, still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue; virtue must be practised. Therefore, let no one do to others what he would not have done to himself.

~ Yagnavalkya

...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?

~ Marquis De Sade

Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.

~ Richard Flanagan

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

~ Mark Twain

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.

~ Oscar Wilde

Neeta showed us there can be as much virtue in the things we do not do as on those we do.

~ Anne Fortier

That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth

~ Alastair Reynolds

They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.

~ Geoffrey Wood

We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.

~ Geoffrey Wood

No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

To be moral, an act must be free.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Virtue in a woman is like pepper in the soup. A little makes for a nice seasoning. Butoverdo it, and no one wants very much of you.

~ Lisa Kleypas

You say that Caesar Borgia suffered the just punishment of his crimes. He was destroyed not by his misdeeds, but by circumstances over which he had no control. His wickedness was an irrelevant accident. In this world of sin and sorrow if virtue triumphs over vice it is not because it is virtuous, but because it has better and bigger guns; if honesty prevails over double-dealing, it is not because it is honest, but because it has a stronger army more ably led; and if good overcomes evil it is not because it is good, but because it has a well-lined purse. It is well to have right on our side, but it madness to forget that unless we have might as well it will avail us nothing. We must believe that God loves men of good will, but there is no evidence to show that He will save fools from the result of their folly.

~ W. Somerset Maugham