quotes about Virtue
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Determination is the fuel that propels one to higher virtues.
-- Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni -
I could enjoy the life that I had by virtue of the educational attainment that my grandparents and parents had pursued. Education was always incredibly valued in our family.
-- Adam Braun -
Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.
-- Adela Florence Nicolson -
Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
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Royalty consists not in vain pomp, but in great virtues
-- Agesilaus II -
Valor would cease to be a virtue, if there were no injustice.
-- Agesilaus II -
Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.
-- Agnes Repplier -
There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.
-- Agnes RepplierSource : Agnes Repplier (1898). “Varia”
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We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us.
-- Ajahn Chah -
The loftiest in status are those who do not know their own status, and the most virtuous of them are those who do not know their own virtue.
-- Al-Shafi‘i -
There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.
-- Alan Cohen -
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Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice.
-- Alan RyanSource : "Justice". Introduction to the book edited by Alan Ryan, 1993.
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A mode of thought does not become 'critical' simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.
-- Alan SokalSource : Jean Bricmont, Alan Sokal (2011). “Intellectual Impostures”, p.196, Profile Books
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Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
-- Alasdair MacIntyreSource : Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.175, A&C Black
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I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.
-- Albert Camus -
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Relegating conservation to government is like relegating virtue to the Sabbath. Turns over to professionals what should be daily work of amateurs .
-- Aldo Leopold -
Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Knowledge is porportionate to being... You know in virtue of what you are.
-- Aldous Huxley -
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For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
-- Aldous Huxley -
We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.
-- Alex Comfort -
The multitude . . . have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them. . . . It is not safe to trust to the virtue of any people.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Happy will it be for ourselves, and most honorable for human nature, if we have wisdom and virtue enough to set so glorious an example to mankind!
-- Alexander Hamilton -
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Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.
-- Alexander Pope -
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?
-- Alexander Pope -
Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed.
-- Alexander Pope -
Count all th' advantage prosperous Vice attains, 'Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains: And grant the bad what happiness they would, One they must want--which is, to pass for good.
-- Alexander Pope -
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Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.
-- Alexander Pope -
That virtue only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.
-- Alexander Pope -
Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?
-- Alexander the Great -
As to virtue . . . it is an act of the will, a habit which increases the quantity, intensity and quality of life. It builds up, strengthens and vivifies personality.
-- Alexis Carrel -
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Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
-- Alfred Whitney Griswold -
[L]iberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted . . .
-- Algernon SidneySource : Algernon Sidney (1750). “Discourses Concerning Government”, p.363
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When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring,
-- Alister E. McGrath -
For centuries, the question of men needing to comprehend women simply didn't arise. Men were valued according to how they measured up to the manly virtues.
-- Allison PearsonSource : "Irrational. Contradictory. Mad" by Allison Pearson, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2007.
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True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
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Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others.
-- Alphonse Karr -
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction - prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
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Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Equanimity is the gem in virtue's chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
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The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
When I hear of people who weary of each other, I believe it is because they have sought virtues in themselves alone, attractions of physical beauty. Have they based their love on each other's thoughts? Who can weary of thoughts which change every day?
-- Anais Nin -
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
-- Anatole France -
Fermentation is the exhalation of a substance through the admixture of a ferment which, by virtue of its spirit, penetrates the mass and transforms it into its own nature.
-- Andreas Libavius -
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Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew YoungSource : Quoted in Paul Dickson, The Official Explanations (1980)
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What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.
-- Ann BridgeSource : Ann Bridge (2013). “Singing Waters”, p.178, A&C Black
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Patience is a virtue, and Americans have it in short supply,
-- Ann McLane Kuster -
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Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.
-- Ann Patchett -
A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined.
-- Ann Petry -
But St. Aubert had too much good sense to prefer a charm to a virtue ...
-- Ann Radcliffe -
Faith is a term that makes ignorance sound like a virtue
-- Anthony Provenzano -
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By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.
-- Anton Chekhov -
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?
-- Anton Chekhov -
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain, in respect to ourselves, to our fellowmen, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
-- Archibald Alexander -
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Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue
-- Aristotle -
Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.
-- Aristotle -
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
-- Aristotle -
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Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.
-- Aristotle -
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
-- Aristotle -
Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.
-- Aristotle -
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.
-- Aristotle -
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There must be in prudence also some master virtue.
-- Aristotle -
Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue;
-- Aristotle -
Over Legislation is not necessarily a virtue. It often leads to misuse of law.
-- Arun Jaitley -
I could live a better life if I had a better mind and a better body
-- Ashleigh Brilliant -
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By virtue of being born to humanity, every human being has a right to the development and fulfillment of his potentialities as a human being.
-- Ashley Montagu -
Avoid places that disturb your mind, and always remain where your virtues increase.
-- Atisa -
Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue.
-- August Wilhelm von Schlegel -
Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.
-- Augustine Joseph Hickey Duganne -
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Moral prejudices are the stopgaps of virtue; and, as is the case with other stopgaps, it is often more difficult to get either out or in through them than through any other part of the fence.
-- Augustus William Hare -
Let them (the wicked) see the beauty of virtue, and pine at having forsaken her. [Lat., Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.]
-- Aulus Persius Flaccus -
It is in the nature of water ... to become transformed into earth through a predominating earthy virtue; ... it is in the nature of earth to become transformed into water through a predominating aqueous virtue.
-- AvicennaSource : Avicenna, Desmond Christopher Mandeville, Aristotle (1927). “De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, being sections of the Kitāb al-shifâ: The Latin and Arabic texts, edited with an English translation of the latter and with critical notes”
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In this era in which we live, the old-fashioned virtues grow increasingly unpopular.
-- B. Carroll Reece -
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The origin of corruption in politics is surely in the thought that you are the bearer of ultimate virtue.
-- B. W. PoweSource : "Towards a Canada of Light". Book by B. W. Powe, 2006.
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When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice.
-- Barbara Amiel -
In my opinion, moderation is a vastly overrated virtue, particularly when applied to work
-- Barbara Taylor BradfordSource : Barbara Taylor Bradford (1987). “A Woman of Substance”, Bantam
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Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.
-- Baroness OrczySource : Baroness Orczy (2015). “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, p.88, Xist Publishing
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Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
-- Baruch Spinoza -
True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
-- Baruch Spinoza -
Let them call it mischief; when it is past and prospered, it will be virtue.
-- Ben Jonson -
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It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere.
-- Ben Jonson -
To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
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The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it's the only one that makes the other virtues possible.
-- Benjamin Netanyahu -
Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul.
-- Benjamin Whichcote -
The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
-- Bergen Evans -