Motivational Quotes

Virtue

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

Best Quotes about Virtue

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

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

Addison, Joseph

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

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

Sallust

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

Lao-Tzu

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

Bible

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.

Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.

Rogers, Will

10.

Virtue is a sure anchor.

Motto

11.

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

12.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

13.

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.

Blackwell, Elizabeth

14.

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

Pope, Alexander

15.

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

Confucius

16.

Virtue survives the grave.

Motto

17.

I have never seen a man as fond of virtue as of women.

Confucius

18.

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

Burroughs, William S.

19.

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

Bush, George

20.

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

Murdoch, Iris

21.

There is no substitute for virtue. Keep your thoughts virtuous. Rise above the filth that's all around you in this world and stand tall in strength and virtue. You can do this and you will be happier for it for as long as you live. God bless you in cherishing, developing and holding on to this great gift, the quality of personal virtue.

Hinckley, Gordon B.

22.

Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person.

Virgil

23.

There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.

Baudelaire, Charles

24.

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

Hazlitt, William

25.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Dahlberg, Edward

26.

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

Bradley, Francis H.

27.

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

28.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Horace

29.

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

30.

Virtue is harmony.

Pythagoras

31.

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

Smith, Adam

32.

Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

33.

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

Lippmann, Walter

34.

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

35.

But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints. [Ephesians 5:3]

Bible

36.

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

37.

Virtue has its own reward, but no sales at the box office.

West, Mae

38.

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.

Hare, David

39.

Why does a virtuous man take delight in the landscapes? Because the din of the dusty world and the locked-in-ness of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors; while on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find.

His, Kuo

40.

Virtue that wavers is not virtue.

Milton, John

41.

Ah, Eug?nie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?

Sade, Marquis De

42.

Be generous, good and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.

Franklin, Billy Boy

43.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

44.

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

Butler, Samuel

45.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

46.

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

Jordan, David Starr

47.

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

48.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

49.

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

50.

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