Quotes About Virtue

Marcus Tullius Cicero

a distinction has gradually sprung up between what is expedient and what is right. But the implication that something can be right without being expedient, or expedient without being right, is the most pernicious error that could possibly be introduced into human life.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

User de ce qu'on a, et agir en tout selon ses forces, telle est la règle du sage.

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.

they follow nature as the most perfect guide to a good life. Now

Breve tempus ætatis satis est longum ad bene honesteque vivendum

The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.

Gut ist, was den Guten gefällt.

For is there anything so absurd as to delight in many inanimate things, like public office, fame, and stately buildings, or dress and personal adornment, and to take little or no delight in a sentient being endowed with virtue and capable of loving, and — if I may so term it — of loving back?

But inasmuch as things human are frail and fleeting, we must be ever on the search for some persons whom we shall love and who will love us in return; for if goodwill and affection are taken away, every joy is taken from life. For me, indeed, though he was suddenly snatched away, Scipio still lives and will always live; for it was his virtue that caused my love and that is not dead.

This is all that I had to say about friendship; but I exhort you both so to esteem virtue (without which friendship cannot exist), that, excepting virtue, you will think nothing more excellent than friendship.

nothing is generous that is not at the same time just.

Justice is the mistress and queen of all the virtues.

Denn wirklich tugendhaft wollen nicht so Viele sein als scheinen.

We may, I think, give the name of perfect duty to the absolute right, which the Greeks term ?????????;1 while contingent duty is what they call ????????.2 According to their definitions, what is right in itself is perfect duty; that for the doing of which a satisfactory reason can be given is a contingent

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali.

Your friend is intellectually honourable, Jimmy's mother would say. He doesn't lie to himself.

you could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic.

She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.

Is extreme goodness always weak? Can a person be good only in the absence of power? The Tempest asks us these questions. There is of course another kind of strength, which is the strength of goodness to resist evil; a strength that Shakespeare's audience would have understood well. But that kind of strength is not much on display in The Tempest. Gonzalo is simply not tempted. He doesn't have to say no to a sinfully rich dessert, because he's never offered one.

I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.

She's a lean vixen: I can see the ribs, the sly trickster's eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinny feet, adept at lies. Why encourage the notion of virtuous poverty? It's only an excuse for zero charity. Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger corrupts absolutely

What virtue was once attached to this notion – of going beyond your strength, of not sparing yourself, of ruining your health! Nobody is born with that kind of selflessness: it can be acquired only by the most relentless discipline, a crushing-out of natural inclination, and by my time the knack or secret of it must have been lost. Or perhaps I didn't try, having suffered from the effects it had on my mother.