Virtue Quotations
- " Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life."
-- Joseph Addison - "The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more."
-- Woody Allen - "Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell."
-- Anonymous - "The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing."
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
-- Aristotle - "My good intentions are completely lethal."
-- Margaret Atwood - "Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that and those that don't need to be told."
-- Margot Asquith - "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature."
-- Marcus Aelius Aurelius - " Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present."
-- Roger Babson - "Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions."
-- Roger Babson - "Silence is the virtue of fools."
-- Sir Francis Bacon - "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men~the master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order."
-- Sir Francis Bacon - "Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable."
-- James Baldwin - "Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience."
-- Ludwig van Beethoven - "[Faith] is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine."
-- Ruth Fulton Benedict - "There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts."
-- Mary Bertone - "Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting thing he has got."
-- Josh Billings - "That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect."
-- Jean de La Bruyère - "All government ~ indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act ~ is founded on compromise and barter."
-- Edmund Burke - "Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative species of virtue which consists in not doing what is scandalously depraved and wicked. But there is no heart of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the grosser sin."
-- Horace Bushnell - "Indeed, the Founders mentioned the pagan authors in so many heartfelt speeches, pamphlets and letters that today's sweeping references to America's Christian roots and Judeo-Christian heritage ought to be amended. Maybe these terms should be reserved to explain the traditional religions and morality of individuals, families, congregations, small communitities. Politically, our notions of virtue and vice have had another genesis."
-- Colin Campbell - "I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
-- G. K. Chesterton - "The depth of a soul is not measured by what appears on the surface, but what lies in the heart."
-- Unknown - "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
-- Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill - "Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability."
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero - "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues."
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero - "To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness."
-- Confucius - "Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors."
-- Confucius - "Fine words and insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue."
-- Confucius - "Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences."
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld - "Virtue is praised but hated. People run away from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you must keep your feet warm."
-- Denis Diderot - "Blushing is the color of virtue."
-- Laertius Diogenes - "And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm."
-- John Dryden - "I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest."
-- Alexandre Dumas pere - "Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice only the willingness to make it when necessary."
-- Frederick Sherwood Dunn- "From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8,000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone."
-- Barbara Ehrenreich- "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world."
-- Euripides
Eight Virtues - "From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8,000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone."
- "He is ill clothed, who is bare of virtue."
-- Benjamin Franklin - "Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith - "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
-- Barry Morris Goldwater - "A friend should be one in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its justness and its sincerity."
-- Robert Hall - "To think ill of mankind, and not to wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue."
-- William Hazlitt - "There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors. But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity."
-- Claude Adrien Helvetius - "Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled."
-- The Hitopadesa - "If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble."
-- Elbert Hubbard - "In matters of style, swim with the currents. In matters of principle, stand like a rock."
-- Thomas Jefferson - "There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."
-- Thomas Jefferson - "I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am."
-- Samuel Johnson - "Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it."
-- David Star Jordan - "New capabilities emerge just by virtue of having smart people with access to state-of-the-art technology."
-- Robert E. Kahn - "If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life; the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show; and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery."
-- Charles Krauthammer - "Practice random acts of kindness and sensless acts of beauty."
-- Adair Lara - "The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them."
-- David Herbert Lawrence - "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
-- Abraham Lincoln - "The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones."
-- W. Somerset Maugham - "Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone."
-- H. L. Mencken - "There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline."
-- Michel de Montaigne - "Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."
-- P. J. O'Rourke - "When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."
-- Thomas Paine - "The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling."
-- Paula Poundstone - "Practice no vice because it's trivial. Neglect no virtue because it's so."
-- Chinese Proverb - "First secure an independent income, then practice virtue."
-- Greek Proverb - "Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality."
-- George Bernard Shaw - "Virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue."
-- Socrates - "There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say."
-- John Ernst Steinbeck - "What then have I done? What, except yield to a natural feeling, inspired by beauty, sanctioned by virtue and kept at all times within the bounds of respect. It's innocent expression prompted not by hope but by trust."
-- Vicomte de Valmont - "Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself."
-- Sir John Vanbrugh - "What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy."
-- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire - "Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
-- George Washington - "Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
-- Evelyn Waugh - "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."
-- Mae West - "Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried."
-- Mae West - "As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them."
-- Oscar Wilde - "I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy."
-- Oscar Wilde - "It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious."
-- Oscar Wilde - "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
-- Oscar Wilde - "The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. "
-- Virginia Woolf - "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing."
-- William Butler Yeats - "Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There's a world, you see, which has people in it who believe in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence."
-- Frank Zappa
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