Quotes About Virtue

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

I have known numbers of bourgeois Socialists. I have listened by the hour to their tirades against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian table manners. Yet after all why not? Why should a man who thinks all virtue resides in the proletariat still take such pains to drink his soup silently? It can only be because in his heart he feels that proletarian manners are disgusting.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt to the bones.' 'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.

Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

Listen, the more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?" "Yes, perfectly." "I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones." "Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.

Faith, hope, money - only a saint could have the first two without having the third.

Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that? I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime.

Most people want to be good, but not that good and not all the time.

For money buys all virtues. Money suffereth long and is kid, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own

Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?' 'Yes, perfectly.' 'I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.' 'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.' 'You like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?' 'I adore it.

Kind little words, which are of the same blood as great and holy deeds," flowed from his lips constantly.

I think it's also important to remember that all excesses come from somewhere. Whatever irrational or evil act we observe likely felt reasonable, even virtuous, to the person who did it. (Keith is on a roll, until he isn't.) I think any of us could become such a person under the right (wrong) conditions. Otherwise, history is just a bunch of inexcusable things being done by morons who were nothing like us. And there's nowhere to go with that.

Every human position has a problem with it. Believed in too much, it slides into error. It's not that no position is correct; it's that no position is correct for long. We're perpetually slipping out of absolute virtue and failing to notice, blinded by our desire to settle in—to finally stop fretting about things and relax forever and just be correct; to find an agenda and stick with it.

His headstrong nature, a virtue in that previous place, imperils him here, where the natural law, harsh and arbitrary, brooks no rebellion, and must be scrupulously obeyed.

I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.

Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of a tractable and commendable nature; and in all cases of passion admit reason to govern.

Saya harap, saya selalu memiliki cukup keteguhan dan cukup kebajikan untuk memelihara gelar yang saya anggap paling mengagumkan, yaitu watak sebagai orang jujur.

89th: Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.

Impatience [...] is a twentieth-century virtue. At twenty, when they saw, or thought they saw, what life could be, the sum of bliss it held, the endless conquests it allowed, they realised they would not have the strength to wait. Like anyone else, they could have made it; but all they wanted was to have it made. That is probably the sense in which they were what are commonly called intellectuals.

God knows I'm no saint, but I don't think I'm more of a sinner than any other man.

Oh, 'tis not my qualities they object to! 'Tis my lack of vice.