Quotes About Virtue

Porque la audacia es una virtud, y las lágrimas de la posteridad serán perlas, pero los negocios son los negocios.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

No doubt, when modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools; for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one.

Compassion is the basis of all morality

God, who in the beginning was the creator, appears in the end as revenger and rewarder. Deference to such a God admittedly can produce virtuous actions; however, because fear of punishment or hope for reward are their motive, these actions will not be purely moral; on the contrary, the inner essence of such virtue will amount to prudent and carefully calculating egoism.

Virtue cannot be taught, no more than genius; indeed, concepts are as unfruitful for it as for art and of use only as tools.

Virtue is as little taught as is genius; indeed, the concept is just as unfruitful for it as it is for art, and in the case of both can be used only as an instrument. We should therefore be just as foolish to expect that our moral systems and ethics would create virtuous, noble, and holy men, as that our aesthetics would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

Fundamental disposition towards others, assuming the character either of Envy or of Sympathy, is the point at which the moral virtues and vices of mankind first diverge.

All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.

The paltry character of most men compels the few who have any merit or genius to behave as though they did not know their own value, and consequently did not know other people's want of value; for it is only on this condition that the mob acquiesces in tolerating merit. A virtue has been made out of this necessity, and it is called modesty.

whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

Virtue cannot be taught, no more than genius…We would thus be just as foolish to expect that our moral systems and ethics might awaken the virtuous, noble, and saintly as that our aesthetics might awaken poets, sculptors, and musicians.

Reason recognized from this the fact that, both to lessen the suffering spread among everyone and to distribute it as uniformly as possible, the best and only means is to spare everyone the pain of suffering wrong by having everyone renounce the enjoyment attainable by wrongdoing.

Die Ehre ist nicht die Meinung von besonderen, diesem Subjekt allein zukommenden Eigenschaften, sondern nur von den der Regel nach vorauszusetzenden, als welche auch ihm nicht abgehen sollen. Sie besagt daher nur, daß dies Subjekt keine Ausnahme mache, während der Ruhm besagt, daß es eine mache. Ruhm muß daher erst erworben werden, die Ehre hingegen braucht bloß nicht verloren zu gehen.

Si se pudiese castrar a todos los canallas y encerrar en conventos a todas las muchachas tontas, dotar de un harén a todos los hombres de carácter noble, y de verdaderos hombres a todas las muchachas inteligentes y sensatas, pronto nacería una generación que eclipsaría la época de Pericles.

La conmiseración con los animales está íntimamente unida a la bondad de carácter de tal suerte, que se puede afirmar de seguro que quien es cruel con los animales no puede ser buena persona

La compasión por los animales está íntimamente asociada con la bondad del carácter y puede ser afirmado que el que es cruel con los animales no puede ser un buen hombre.

Socrates asked the key question: why should we be moral?

It celebrated (but never preached) the virtue of spirituality over sacrament, simplicity over opulence and stubborn, ecstatic love even when faced with the prospect of annihilation.

Confucius did not accept the status quo, which held that wealth and power spoke the loudest. He felt that virtue, both as a personal quality and as a requirement for leadership, was essential for individual dignity, communal solidarity, and political order.

People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken.... Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence. It sets a high, seemingly impossible, expectation for performance and human behavior.

Wisdom is prudent strength.

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.