Quotes About Virtue

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

Generally speaking, ego isn't a good thing. Humility is the most important quality in a human being.

Not doing evil is happiness.

Doing no evil, Engaging in what's skillful, And purifying one's mind: This is the teaching of the buddhas.

In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity? In good works? Possibly. In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps. But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality

People behaved mostly well and then they died.

But your achievement for others may easily come to be inscribed in the book of eternity -- either that which is seen on earth or that other which is believed to be in heaven. For that which you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue, but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own virtue. Farewell.

The aim of every political Constitution, is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. —James Madison (1751–1836)

No other civilization anywhere in history ever moved in this direction — only the West, under the influence of Christian principles. Along with equality came the idea of inalienable, God-given rights, which led to the Enlightenment emphasis on life, liberty, property, and virtue.

No sistema aristotélico, a ética é um fator relativamente pouco importante. O cristianismo, entretanto, com a condenação do pecado e o apelo à retidão dá forte ênfase à moral. Não obstante, a ética não é a base do sistema cristão. A teologia é mais fundamental, pois a ética depende de Deus.

In a republic that depended on the intelligence and virtue of all citizens, the diffusion of knowledge had to be widespread. Indeed, said Noah Webster, education had to be "the most important business in civil society.

In 1788 Dr. Rush had told the clergy that, whatever their doctrinal differences, "you are all united in inculcating the necessity of morals," and "from the success or failure of your exertions in the cause of virtue, we anticipate the freedom or slavery of our country.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made

sees virtue, freedom in a less perfect union.

and the people. Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and honorable in all and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro' conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation.

O, über die weilden, unbiegsamen Männer, die nur immer ihr stieres Auge auf das Gespenst der Ehre heften!

Warum sind wir zu gewissen Tugenden bei einem gesunden und seine Kräfte fühlenden Körper weniger, als bei einem siechen und abgematteten aufgelegt?

Never presume yours is a better morality.

Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint.

Knowledge was the great thing--not abstract knowledge in which Dr. Forester had been so rich, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed, passionate, trivial human knowledge.

It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin--only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it.

There was not much one could do; he decided at least to be good.