Quotes About Virtue

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

She lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

If you look at your life and compare your life to that of an evil person, you will find that in most regards both lives are the same. You don't live a longer life or live forever by being virtuous.

A good name is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.

Nor is it the least advantage to health, accruing from such a way of life, that it expose those who follow it to fewer temptations to vice, than persons who live in crowded society.

Nothing but a good life can fit men for a better one hereafter.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.

Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.

Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one's life.

Be purity of life the test, leave to the heart, to heaven the rest.

Punctuality is the stern virtue of men of business, and the graceful courtesy of princes

Happiness and virtue rest upon each other the best are not only the happiest, but the happiest are usually the best.

What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.

Virtue, I fear, has, in a great degree, taken its departure from our Land, and the want of disposition to do justice is the source of the national embarrassments," he concluded.5

It would also require a conscious effort to look at the world from unfamiliar standpoints and admit that the West has no monopoly on truth or virtue.

The competition between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

When an individual is cooperative and altruistic, this reduces his advantage in competition to a comparable degree with other members but increases the survival and reproduction rate of the group as a whole. In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population.

individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others.

Thinking that you are good can make you bad. Talking about positive behavior can encourage negative behavior. Laozi is clearly on to something when he warns us that consciously trying to be righteous will, in fact, turn us into insufferable hypocrites and that anyone striving to attain virtue is destined to fail.