Quotes on Virtue

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.

Author: Lyman Abbott

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

Author: Joseph Addison

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

Author: Felix Adler

When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice.

Author: Barbara Amiel

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

Author: Thomas Aquinas

There is a tendency around the world today to copy TV culture. And that is not always a virtue.

Author: Francis Arinze

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Author: Aristotle

Compassion is not a popular virtue.

Author: Karen Armstrong

Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

Author: Francis Atterbury

The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.

Author: Saint Augustine

According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication.

Author: Irving Babbitt

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Author: Francis Bacon

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Author: Francis Bacon

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Author: Francis Bacon

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Author: Hosea Ballou

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Author: Natalie Barney

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

Author: Max Beerbohm

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Author: Ludwig Beethoven

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue.

Author: William Bennett

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

Author: Christian Bovee

The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.

Author: F. Bradley

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

Author: William Bryant

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Author: Buddha

Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?

Author: Edgar Burroghs

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Author: Samuel Butler

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

Author: Samuel Butler

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.

Author: Samuel Butler

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Author: Samuel Butler

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Author: Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

Author: Samuel Butler

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

Author: Lord Byron

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

Author: Albert Camus

Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.

Author: Robert Cecil

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Author: Miguel Cervantes

Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

Author: Miguel Cervantes

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Author: Chanakya

I always admired virtue - but I could never imitate it.

Author: Charles Charles II

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

Author: Lord Chesterfield

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Author: Gilbert Chesterton

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Author: Winston Churchill

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

Author: Marcus Cicero

Honor is the reward of virtue.

Author: Marcus Cicero

Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness.

Author: Edwin Cole

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Author: Charles Colton

We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.

Author: Alex Comfort

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Author: Confucius

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

Author: Confucius

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

Author: Confucius

When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.

Author: Charles Cooley

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

Author: Quentin Crisp

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Author: Edward Dahlberg

Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It's a spiritual dissipation.

Author: Margaret Deland

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Author: Denis Diderot

Blushing is the color of virtue.

Author: Diogenes

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

Author: Will Durant

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Author: Albert Einstein

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

Author: Euripides

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

Author: Francois Fenelon

What's vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.

Author: Henry Fielding

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

Author: Anatole France

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Author: Anatole France

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

Author: Anatole France

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

Author: Erich Fromm

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

Author: James Froude

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

Author: R. Fuller

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

Author: John Galbraith

I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.

Author: Paul Getty

Tolerance it a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbors of tolerance are apathy and weakness.

Author: James Goldsmith

There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.

Author: Oliver Goldsmith

Tenderness is a virtue.

Author: Oliver Goldsmith

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Author: Barry Goldwater

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

Author: Barry Goldwater

Let us search into the records of Holy Writ, if out of this their great charter, there be not a seal grant of a lesser, though like privilege, and this by virtue of Christ, in that we have the honour to be accounted Abraham's seed as truly as they.

Author: Thomas Goodwin

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

Author: Henry Grunwald

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

Author: Rutherford Hayes

Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.

Author: John Herschel

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

Author: Theodore Hesburgh

Value manifests itself as exchange value, as a quantitatively determined relationship, in virtue of the fact that one commodity can be exchanged for another.

Author: Rudolf Hiferding

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Author: Hippocrates

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

Author: Victor Hugo

The day has gone by into the dim vista of the past when idleness was considered a virtue in woman.

Author: Caroline Huling

Geraldo has been in Lebanon. He has done some excellent reporting out of there, and of course, we now know by virtue of the president's speech on Tuesday night that the terrorist organizations that operate in that area are now on the list.

Author: Brit Hume

To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject.

Author: Edmund Husserl

Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.

Author: Edmund Husserl

Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.

Author: Robert Ingersoll

Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.

Author: Silius Italicus

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered t'will be virtue.

Author: Ben Jonson

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

Author: Johann Lavater

Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.

Author: Ninon Lenclos

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Author: Georg Lichtenberg

Cheerfulness is a very great help in fostering the virtue of charity. Cheerfulness itself is a virtue.

Author: Lawrence Lovasik

Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.

Author: Emil Ludwig

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

Author: Niccolo Machiavelli

Who hath not known ill fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue.

Author: David Mallet

True valor, on virtue founded strong, meets all events alike.

Author: David Mallet

Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.

Author: David Mallet

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

Author: Thomas Malthus

Virtue is the fount whence honour springs.

Author: Christopher Marlowe

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.

Author: Don Marquis

It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.

Author: Jose Marti

Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.

Author: Judith Martin

Ambition, in a private man is a vice, is in a prince the virtue.

Author: Philip Massinger

Patience, the beggar's virtue, shall find no harbor here.

Author: Philip Massinger

Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.

Author: Jonathan Mayhew

I didn't get into acting to be a public service announcer or an advocate and yet, by virtue of this show and how we handle the subject matter that we've been given, that's kind of how it's evolved in certain ways.

Author: Christopher Meloni

Exaggerated self-importance is deemed an individual fault, but a racial virtue.

Author: Kelly Millar

I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case.

Author: Jonathan Miller

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.

Author: John Milton

I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.

Author: Moliere

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

Author: Michel Montaigne

They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.

Author: John Morley

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

Author: Benito Mussolini

I want to present interesting stories that don't qualify themselves just by virtue of their ethnographic type.

Author: Ajay Naidu

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.

Author: Jawaharlal Nehru

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

Author: John Newman

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

Author: Adela Nicolson

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Of the Marines on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Author: Chester Nimitz

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

Author: George Orwell

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

Author: Ovid

Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony an iniquitous law gives me over the person and property of another, I cannot legally, but I can morally, divest myself.

Author: Robert Owen

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Author: Thomas Paine

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

Author: Thomas Paine

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Author: Thomas Paine

There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.

Author: Gilbert Parker

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

Author: Max Planck

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Author: Plato

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

Author: Plato

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Author: Plato

Persevere in virtue and diligence.

Author: Titus Plautus

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

Author: Alexander Pope

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Author: Alexander Pope

Nobility, without virtue, is a fine setting without a gem.

Author: Jane Porter

Be to their virtue very kind; be to their faults a little blind.

Author: Matthew Prior

Virtue is harmony.

Author: Pythagoras

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

Author: Marcus Quintilian

Believe me, 'tis a godlike thing to lend; to owe is a heroic virtue.

Author: Francois Rabelais

Too much virtue can be criminal.

Author: Jean Racine

I have pushed virtue to outright brutality.

Author: Jean Racine

Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady, but a newspaper can always print a retraction.

Author: Charles Revson

Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces.

Author: Geraldo Rivera

Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

Author: Maximilien Robespierre

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

Author: Francois Rochefoucauld