Virtue Quotes

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It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue.

The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.

Theodore Roosevelt

There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue,--is not that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and.... their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice.... These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.

Thomas Jefferson

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

Bertrand Russell

Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.

G. K. Chesterton

Great vices, and great virtues, are exceptions in mankind.

Napoleon I of France

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths.

William Shakespeare

No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not the love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish. Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and exaltation of virtue — But these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water

Each Has His Destined Time: a span
Is All The Heritage Of Man:
'Tis virtue's part by deeds of praise
To lengthen fame through after days.

Whoever wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue: then others can imitate and yet at the same time surpass the one they imitate-which human beings love to do.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard, and many a time Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

G. K. Chesterton

My heart laments that virtue cannot live
Out of the teeth of emulation.

William Shakespeare

Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own.

Simón Bolívar

True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

Virtue preserv'd from fell destruction's blast,
Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last.

William Shakespeare

A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.

Niccolò Machiavelli