Virtue Quotes

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

If thou desire to purchase honor with thy wealth, consider first how that wealth became thine; if thy labor got it, let thy wisdom keep it; if oppression found it, let repentance restore it; if thy parent left it, let thy virtues deserve it; so shall thy honor be safer, better and cheaper.

Francis Quarles

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Petrarch, De Remedies

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Baruch Spinoza

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)

The man who willeth to do well... we should extol his virtues and speak not of his faults behind his back.

Joseph Smith Jr.

Shall ignorance of good and ill Dare to direct the eternal will? Seek virtue, and of that possest, To Providence resign the rest.

Gay

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 happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Virtue can only flourish among equals.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

Thomas Paine