Virtue Quotes

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

George Bancroft

The most eminent virtue is doing simply what we have to do.

Jose Maria Peman, Spanish writer, El Divino Impaciente

Nature does not loathe virtue it is unaware of its existence.

Franoise Mallet - Joris

One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence. Moreover, that in that does happiness consist.

Diogenes Laertius, Zeno

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Plutarch, Morals

The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.

D. H. Lawrence

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

George Washington

If you live long enough, the venerability factor creeps in first, you get accused of things you never did, and later, credited for virtues you never had.

I. F. Stone

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

Lord Macaulay

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Jenny replied to this with a bitterness which might have surprized a judicious person, who had observed the tranquillity with which she bore all the affronts to her chastity; but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Sir Francis Bacon

Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.

Silius Italicus

There are very few women in society whose virtue outlasts their beauty.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.

Frank Zappa

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

Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Sir Francis Bacon, Of Adversity

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Francis Bacon

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Ambrose Bierce

Whoever feels pain in hearing a good character of his neighbor, will feel a pleasure in the reverse. And those who despair to rise in distinction by their virtues, are happy if others can be depressed to a level of themselves.

Benjamin Franklin

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Cicero

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

Whitheead

The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.

Socrates

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Abraham Lincoln

No virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic.

Sir J. R. Seeley

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

Johann von Goethe

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

Jean - Jacques Rousseau

Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams

A good inclination is but the first rude draught of virtue, but the finishing strokes are from the will, which, if well disposed, will by degrees perfect it, as if all disposed will quickly deface it.

South

Modesty and unselfishness - - These are the virtues which men praise - - And pass by.

Andr Maurois

All government - - Indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - - Is founded on compromise and barter.

Edmund Burke, Speech on the Conciliation of America

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Cicero

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.

William Butler Yeats

Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled.

The Hitopadesa

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects