quotations about virtue
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
Virtue survives the grave.
KALIDASA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
This is the tax a man must pay to his virtues--they hold up a torch to his vices, and render those frailties notorious in him, which would have passed without observation in another.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by whom alone it can be given, and the whole crowd of false gods vanishes.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
We look around us ... we find that we exist, we find ourselves reasoning upon the mystery which involves our being ... we see virtue and vice, we see the light and darkness, each is separate, distinct; the line which divides them is glaringly perceptible; yet how racking it is to the soul, when enquiring into its own operations, to find that perfect virtue is very far from attainable, to find reason tainted by feeling, to see the mind when analysed exhibit a picture of irreconcilable inconsistencies, even when perhaps a moment before, it imagined that it had grasped the fleeting Phantom of virtue.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, June 20, 1811
Virtue has a secret dignity, even with those that ridicule it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Some people have an idea that virtue exists only where the blood is cold.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Envy", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
If virtue holds the secret, don't defer;
Be off with pleasure, and be on with her.
HORACE
Epistles
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Virtue is like precious odors -- most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Adversity", Essays
Virtue only is the true beauty.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
A man's virtue should not be measured by his occasional exertions, but by his ordinary doings.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Virtue seems to be nothing more than a motion consonant to the system of things. Were a planet to fly from its orbit, it would represent a vicious man.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
If virtue promises good fortune and tranquility and happiness, certainly also the progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon