quotations about virtue
The more we use wisdom and virtue, the more they are our own, and the more we have of them.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Aurora
Every deed of dishonor, every victim of vice, every ghastly spectacle of crime, is an eloquent testimony to the need and the worth of virtue.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
In the non-internet world where behavior is observable and people are accountable, virtue is easy to spot.
DAVE HUNTOON
"Divided", The Moderate Voice, April 23, 2017
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
If one doth act in friendly wise,
With no evil thought toward any single creature,
And in so doing becometh proper,
And if he have compassion in his soul
Toward all living beings--this noble one
Doth acquire abundant Virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
Virtue, like beauty, is commonly only skin deep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.
CONFUCIUS
The Doctrine of the Mean
However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
Virtue alone has majesty in death.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
As the flower, when plucked for enjoyment, begins to wither, so does virtue practiced for reward begin to vanish.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
They that are virtuous from principle may receive confidence in every capacity; but they that are so from custom or habit, are capable of trust only in matters of ordinary and settled occurrence.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
To Virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, tho' descended from the Conqueror.
EDWARD YOUNG
Love of Fame: The Universal Passion in Seven Characteristical Satires
Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Virtue makes us appear amiable to others; vice, contemptible even to ourselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections