Motivational Quotes

Virtue

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

- Nehru, Jawaharlal

Best Quotes about Virtue

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth.

Proverb, English

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Smith, Adam

If we had to seek virtue outside of ourselves, that would assuredly be difficult; but as it is within us, it suffices to avoid bad thoughts and to keep our souls turned toward the Lord.

Philokalia

If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.

Bush, George

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

Swift, Jonathan

The first time you see Winston Churchill you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues.

Lytton, Lady Constance

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

Burroughs, William S.

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

Diderot, Denis

I used to be snow white, but I drifted.

West, Mae

10.

A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.

Antrim, Minna

11.

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.

Shaw, George Bernard

12.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Burke, Edmund

13.

From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

14.

The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

15.

Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtues grave.

Duganne, Augustine J.

16.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.

Pope, Alexander

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

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

Bradley, Francis H.

20.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

21.

Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues.

Suso, Heinrich

22.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

23.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

24.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

Murdoch, Iris

25.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. [Galatians 5:23, 24]

Bible

26.

When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.

Marquis, Don

27.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

Howe, Edgar Watson

28.

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

29.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

Hazlitt, William

30.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

34.

Virtue is harmony.

Pythagoras

35.

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.

Carlyle, Thomas

36.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

Lippmann, Walter

37.

The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

Sallust

38.

Virtue that wavers is not virtue.

Milton, John

39.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

Duncan, Isadora

40.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.

Jordan, David Starr

41.

Temperance and labor are the two best virtues. Labor whets the appetite, temperance curbs it.

42.

It is easy enough to be virtuous When nothing tempts you to stray; When without or within No voice of sin Is luring your soul away. But it is only a negative virtue until it is tried by fire. For the soul that is worth the treasures of the earth is the soul that resists desire.

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

43.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Schlegel, Friedrich

44.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Addison, Joseph

45.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

Johnson, Samuel

47.

You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?

Kempis, Thomas

48.

Virtue is the strongest shield.

Motto

49.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

Vizinczey, Stephen