quotations about virtue
Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
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 and vice are the only things in this world, which, with our souls, are capable of surviving death; the former is the rational and only procuring cause of all intellectual happiness, and the latter of conscious guilt and misery; and therefore, our indispensable duty and ultimate interest is, to love, cultivate and improve the one, as the means of our greatest good, and to hate and abstain from the other, as productive of our greatest evil.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Aurora
No virtuous act can be fully virtuous unless it is freely chosen by the person acting.
JAMES STONER
"The Harmony and Balance of Virtue and Liberty", Learn Liberty, April 24, 2017
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
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
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
Virtue alone has majesty in death.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Virtue is also power. As we faithfully live the gospel, we will have power to be virtuous in every thought, feeling and action. Our minds become more receptive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost and the Light of Christ. We embody Christ not only in what we say and do, but in who we are.
ROBERT D. HALES
"Becoming a Disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ", Deseret News, April 1, 2016
Virtue, like beauty, is commonly only skin deep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Virtue seeks the greatest distance from vice.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Virtue makes us appear amiable to others; vice, contemptible even to ourselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
JOHN DRYDEN
Imitation of Horace
Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
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
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