Quotes About Virtue

Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.

The game is called," said the witcher slowly, "don't do unto others what you would not have them do to you.' You don't have to

Hace falta decirte, buen brujo, quiénes son las buenas personas? Son aquéllas a las que el destino les ha escatimado las ocasiones de disfrutar de las ventajas de ser malos. O aquéllas que sí han dispuesto de tales ocasiones, pero han sido demasiado estúpidas para aprovecharlas.

Those who follow a code are often respected and held in high esteem

Os justos serão reconhecidos por sua modéstia.

Um mal é um mal… Menor, maior, médio, tanto faz… As proporções são convencionadas e as fronteiras, imprecisas. Não sou um santo eremita e não pratiquei apenas o bem ao longo de minha vida. Mas, se me couber escolher entre dois males, prefiro abster-me por completo da escolha.

It is not enough to recognize what is right and true. One must control the impulse to do what is wrong and easy.

Courage is not merely one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at its testing point.

Don't good things come to good people?

Virtue is its own punishment.

Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own.

The piety, the gentleness, the honesty, the sensitivity, all the qualities she has learned to admire in herself, are invitations to violence; all her life, she has been groomed for the slaughterhouse. And though she is virtuous, she does not know how to do good.

The notion of a natural propensity for vice is essential to Sadeian psychology; vice is innate, as is virtue, if social conditions are unalterable. This straitjacket psychology relates his fiction directly back to the black and white ethical world of fairy tale and fable; it is in conflict with his frequently expounded general theory of moral relativity, that good and evil are not the same thing at all times and in all places.

Sade's manicheistic dualism sees the world as irredeemably evil; vice must always prosper, virtue always despair. There is no hope for us as we are now.[...]Sade's vision is utterly without transcendence.

Repression is Justine's whole being - repression of sex, of anger and of her own violence; the repressions demanded of Christian virtue, in fact.

Justine's virtue, in action, is the liberal lie in action, a good heart and an inadequate methodology.

But there is no mysterious virtue in Justine's suffering. The martyrdom of this Christ-figure is absolutely useless; she is a gratuitous victim. And if there is no virtue in her suffering, then there is none, it turns out, in her virtue itself; it does nobody any good, least of all herself.

The rich can afford to be virtuous, the poor must shift as best they can.

For Justine's conception of virtue is a specifically feminine one in that sexual abstinence plays a large part in it. In common speech, a 'bad boy' may be a thief, or a drunkard, or a liar, and not necessarily just a womaniser. But a 'bad girl' always contains the meaning of a sexually active girl and Justine knows she is good because she does not fuck.

Life isn't about having things, Grandmother. It's about being a decent person.

People feel at home with low moral standards. It is scruples that put them off.

If, as we have it on the highest authority, there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, why not sin, provisionally? Why not break the rules, like that Prodigal Son (so much more amusing than his tedious brother) who must have attended so many parties like this evening's, and who still came home to enjoy the fatted calf? Because they had felt so dull without him. So extremely bored with only the spectacle of virtue and hard work to beguile them.

there is no virtue in doing something for someone else when it's something you also want to do. That's merely being helpful, but it's hardly commendable. The real virtue is in doing something you don't want to do, but doing it because someone else wants it.

After all, it was easy enough to be virtuous if there was no temptation.