Virtue Quotes

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

Jose Maria Peman, Spanish writer, El Divino Impaciente

A revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.

John Adams, (Diary, 1786)

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

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virtue is praised but hated. People run away from it, for it is ice - Cold and in this world you must keep your feet warm.

Denis Diderot

Knowledge, without common sense, says Lee, is folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death. But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with clarity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Austin Farra

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

Robert K. Merton

The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

One path alone leads to a life of peace: The path of virtue.

Juvenal

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Cicero

Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice only the willingness to make it when necessary.

Frederick Sherwood Dunn

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative species of virtue which consists in not doing what is scandalously depraved and wicked. But there is no heart of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the grosser sin.

Horace Bushnell

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

Andr Maurois

Self - Denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Aristotle, Rhetoric

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

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Francis Quarles

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

Suffering. We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

Anatole France

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

What is virtue but the trades unionism of the married.

George Bernard Shaw

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

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

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Voltaire

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

Evelyn Waugh, Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)

He is ill clothed that is bare of virtue.

Benjamin Franklin

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a great distance, not by virtue of any sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

Bernard of Chartres, 12th Century

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Erik H. Erikson

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 its own punishment.

Aneurin Bevan

A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity.

Robert Hall

Virtue they will but abuse, and taunt her with bitter revilling.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations - Book Eleven

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1653

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

Quintilian

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

Voltaire

Without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues.

Maya Angelou

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

Cicero

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Barry Goldwate