Motivational Quotes

Virtue

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

- Plato

Best Quotes about Virtue

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Smith, Adam

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

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

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

Virgil

Virtue that wavers is not virtue.

Milton, John

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

The highest virtue found in the tropics is chastity, and in the colder regions, temperance.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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.

10.

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

11.

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.

Hare, David

12.

Virtue is the strongest shield.

Motto

13.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Plato

14.

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

Lippmann, Walter

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

18.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Dahlberg, Edward

19.

Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

20.

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

21.

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

Bradley, Francis H.

22.

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth.

Proverb, English

23.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

24.

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

Horace

25.

With virtue you can't be entirely poor; without virtue you can't really be rich.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Washington, George

28.

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

West, Mae

29.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

30.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

Johnson, Samuel

31.

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

Pope, Alexander

32.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

33.

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

Swift, Jonathan

34.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

35.

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

Hazlitt, William

36.

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.

Jung, Carl

37.

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

Bible

38.

I used to be snow white, but I drifted.

West, Mae

39.

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

Murdoch, Iris

40.

Virtue is harmony.