Virtue Quotes

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I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon; Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes; The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.

William Shakespeare

Young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect.

Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory.

Leonardo da Vinci

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

Michel de Montaigne

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their colour.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures … But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered … and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,

William Shakespeare

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.

It is impossible that the eye should project from itself, by visual rays, the visual virtue, since, as soon as it opens, that front portion [of the eye] which would give rise to this emanation would have to go forth to the object and this it could not do without time. And this being so, it could not travel so high as the sun in a month's time when the eye wanted to see it.

Leonardo da Vinci

The sphere of the attractive virtue which is in the moon extends as far as the earth, and entices up the waters; but as the moon flies rapidly across the zenith, and the waters cannot follow so quickly, a flow of the ocean is occasioned in the torrid zone towards the westward.

Johannes Kepler

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.

What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger!" the man in black laughed.

Bad examples may be as profitable to virtue as good ones.

Michel de Montaigne

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

Abraham Lincoln

We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.

Friedrich Nietzsche

No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools, for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

Bertrand Russell

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

How sweet it would be to live in society if the countenance always reflected the disposition, if decency were virtue, and if our maxims were our rules of action.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.

Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.