Confucius - Virtue Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

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Set your will on the Way. Have a firm grasp on virtue. Rely on humanity. Find recreation in the arts.

Confucius
The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyze what I have learned, the inability to move toward righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults-these are the causes of my grief.

Confucius
The man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.

Confucius
It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.

Confucius
Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I have not seen the case in which his strength would be sufficient.

Confucius
If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfil the requirements of that name?

Confucius
Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.

Confucius
When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again.

Confucius
Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact.

Confucius
Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

Confucius
The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

Confucius
To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue.... [They are] gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Confucius
He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

Confucius
What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

Confucius
I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue would esteem nothing above it.

Confucius
Virtue is more to man than either water or fire. I have seen men die from treading on water and fire, but I have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue.

Confucius
Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license.

Confucius
The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

Confucius
A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it.

Confucius
Let every man consider virtue as what devolves on himself. He may not yield the performance of it even to his teacher.

Confucius
Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

Confucius
Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand.

Confucius
The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.

Confucius