Quotes About Virtue

Stalky,' in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and 'stalkiness' was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.

And if you expect you'll gain anything from us by your way of approachin' us, you're jolly well mistaken. That's all. Good-night.' They clattered upstairs, injured virtue on every inch of their backs. 'But - but what the dickens have we done?' said Harrison, amazedly, to Craye. 'I don't know. Only - it always happens that way when one has anything to do with them. They're so beastly plausible.

When a man does good work out of all proportion to his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the virtue. The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke. All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call civilization.

The unexamined life is not worth living'...Socrates made provocative remarks like this famous one as part of his daily practice in Athens in the late fourth century B.C. When he made these statements, he was invariably exhorting his fellow Greeks to avoid falling into the trap of what we might call 'ethical complacency,' the point at which an individual ceases trying to become a better person.

If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.

Man's rights are linked with man's duties, and when they are distorted into extravagant claims for a species of freedom and equality and worldly aggrandizement which human character cannot sustain, they degenerate from rights to vices.

Although these days we commonly talk, hear, or read about 'ethical dilemmas' --- those difficult situations in which we truly are perplexed as to the right course of action --- it is crucial to recognize that these dilemmas, for most of us, represent the exception and not the rule in our lives...What typically is the rule in our daily lives is not a matter of knowing what is right and good but having the character to do what is right and good.

Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.

How much easier the task will be to review your past life, if you live each day as if that was the sole recording of your entire lifetime. Keep that page so neat and tidy, so filled with loving care, that if your life ended at midnight the page would be spotless and blameless, for surely even the worst of us can live one day in nearly blameless harmony with all about us.

She told me that real strength is the capacity for kindness to others, and that I should do whatever I could to find that kind of strength. She said she couldn't tell me how to go about doing that, because she never found it herself, but that people who where strong enough to be kind to others could always get by in this world.

Prefiero, señor, obrar bien y fracasar, antes que triunfar con malas artes. Palabras de Neoptólemo a Odiseo, en la tragedia griega Filoctetes.

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.

Al?ii sunt virtuo?i ziua ?i p?c?tuiesc noaptea;eu ziua sunt pur? prefec?torie,iar noaptea sunt numai dorin?e.

If a man in truth wills the Good then he must be willing to suffer all for the Good.

To love him who makes one happy, is to a reflective mind an inadequate definition of what love is; to love him who made one unhappy out of malice, is virtue; but to love him who out of love, though by a misunderstanding, yet out of love, made one unhappy – that is the formula never yet enunciated, so far as I know, but nevertheless the normal formula in reflection for what it is to love.

But still he must have recourse to the paradox. For when the individual by his guilt has gone outside the universal he can return to it only by virtue of having come as the individual into an absolute relationship with the absolute.

So the merman cannot belong to Agnes unless, after having made the infinite movement, the movement of repentance, he makes still one more movement by virtue of the absurd.

Full revelation, she couldn't help feeling, was something which was considered a virtue only among the reckless or the cruel.

The ruthlessness of the godly invalidated their claims of virtue.

The leisure class, a.k.a. the landed gentry, on whom my business depends," he told Geronimo Manezes, "are the hunters, not the gatherers; they make their way by the immoral road of exploitation, not the virtuous path of industry. But I, to make my way, have to treat the rich as the good guys, the lions, the creators of wealth and guardians of freedom, which naturally I don't mind doing because I'm an exploiter too and I also want to think of myself as virtuous.

by your example you have taught me kindness, and shown me that it expands to include all people, not only the true believers but the unbelievers and other-believers also, not only the virtuous but also those who know not virtue

So, now that Quichotte was in full possession of his senses, there were things he needed to say. 'My quest for you', he told Miss Salma R, 'has not been for you alone, but also for my own compromised goodness and virtue. I see it now. By attaining you - the impossible! - I thought it might validate my life. By becoming worthy of you I might feel worthy of being myself'.

If he believed in souls he would have said she had a good one.