Motivational Quotes

Virtue

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

- Lippmann, Walter

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

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

Hazlitt, William

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

Howe, Edgar Watson

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

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

Bradley, Francis H.

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

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

Lao-Tzu

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

Nehru, Jawaharlal

10.

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

Smith, Adam

11.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

12.

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

Marquis, Don

13.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Horace

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.

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

Plato

18.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Schlegel, Friedrich

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

23.

Virtue survives the grave.

Motto

24.

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

Burke, Edmund

25.

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

26.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Dahlberg, Edward

27.

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

28.

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

Rogers, Will

29.

Virtue that wavers is not virtue.

Milton, John

30.

Virtue is the strongest shield.

Motto

31.

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

Murdoch, Iris

32.

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

33.

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

Sallust

34.

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

Swift, Jonathan

35.

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

Pope, Alexander

36.

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

37.

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

Addison, Joseph

38.

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

Bible

39.

I used to be snow white, but I drifted.

West, Mae

40.

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

Johnson, Samuel

41.

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

Johnson, Samuel

42.

Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Washington, George

43.

Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

45.

Virtue is a sure anchor.

Motto

46.

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

Burroughs, William S.

47.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

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