Quotes About Virtue

I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he's the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.

I believe that loyalty is a cardinal virtue. Nowhere in the world is loyalty so little revered and tittle-tattle so greatly venerated as in Washington.

He was impugning my virtue. I ought to have been offended, but for some reason the idea tickled me. That could be my next career: instrument of torture! Seducing prisoners, and then revealing my dragon scales! They would confess out of sheer horror.

You're American," she said simply. "You think straightforwardness is a virtue.

Men, perhaps, might nourish both heart and mind, but for a woman there could be no such luxury... How readily the rules of female behavior--gentleness, acquiescence, ever-mindfulness--turn to shackles. So, she thought, there must be declared a new kind of virtue: one that made the throwing off of such rules, and even such deceit as this required, praiseworthy.

To keep life in his desolate, long-suffering soul, he had stored his mind with much profound learning. So now many poor devils went to him for advice, which he never refused though he gave it sadly. It was always the same: 'Do the best you can, no man can do more -- but never stop fighting. For us there is no sin so great as despair, and perhaps no virtue so vital as courage.

Friendship is necessary and ennobling; but impersonal despotism is destructive of all dignity and manly virtue.

Tolkien understands the odd danger posed by virtue cut off from the Good. Over and again, he demonstrates his fundamental conviction that evil preys upon our virtues far more than our vices. Our very strengths and assets-whether intelligence or bravery, diligence or loyalty or beauty, but especially righteousness-may dispose us either to scorn those who lack such virtues, or else to employ our gifts for our own selfish ends.

The most beautiful thoughts are nothing without good works.34

Repentance must involve a change of life, bringing our lives into harmony with God's will. This means turning away from sin and yielding to the transforming work of the Spirit so we may grow in virtue.

You test the virtue of patience in yourself when your neighbors insult you. Your humility is tested by the proud, your faith by the unfaithful, your hope by the person who has no hope. Your justice is tried by the unjust, your compassion by the cruel, and your gentleness and kindness by the wrathful. Your neighbors are the channel through which all your virtues are tested and come to birth, just as the evil give birth to all their vices through their neighbors.72

A man's character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth.

You know, Son, sometimes a fellow has to take a licking for doing the right thing. A licking only lasts a short while, even if it's a hard one, but failing to do the right thing will often make a mark on a man that will last forever.

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. There are black men and white men and yellow men and red men, but nothing counts except whether they're honest men or dishonest men.

True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members…. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.