Virtue Quotes

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It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.

Niccolò Machiavelli

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

Michel de Montaigne

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

We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

G. K. Chesterton

No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue.

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

Michel de Montaigne

It is not true that men never change; they change for the worse, as well as for the better. It is not true they are ungrateful; more often the benefactor rates his favors higher than their worth; and often too he does not allow for circumstances. If few men have the moral force to resist impulses, most men do carry within themselves the germs of virtues as well as of vices, of heroism as well as of cowardice. Such is human nature — education and circumstances do the rest.

Napoleon I of France

Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.

Charles Dickens

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.

One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of fibre. The barbarian, because of the very conditions of his life, is forced to keep and develop certain hardy qualities which the man of civilization tends to lose, whether he be clerk, factory hand, merchant, or even a certain type of farmer.

Theodore Roosevelt

Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are, in war, the cardinal virtues.

When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children.
We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

G. K. Chesterton

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

Winston Churchill

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.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Napoleon I of France

Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I have always lived my life by thriving on opportunity and adventure. Some of the best ideas come out of the blue, and you have to keep an open mind to see their virtue.

Richard Branson

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

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

Benjamin Franklin

Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.