Quotes About Virtue

Whoever neglects doing good is inviting addiction to evil.

Wise men mold their own character.

Unwholesome acts cannot bring wholesome results. The things a fool gains amount to nothing.

Curb your speech, restrain your mind, commit no evil deed.

A girl's life was defined by lines: fine lines, hairlines, bikini lines, class lines, the tightrope line between being a good girl and a slut. But there was always a moment when the lines blurred and a good girl had to decide whether to toe the line, cross the line, or stay safe behind the line that guarded her virtue.

You would not lie—you are almost incapable of it. Your disposition would not allow such a thing.

There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.

The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.

All men should be good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed?

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.

The bad things, don't do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas.

The teachings of the Buddha could be summarized in four short sentences. ... [The Buddha] said ... The bad things, don't do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas.

We are not noble by birth. We are noble only by virtue of the way we think, speak, and act.

In the monastery, one must be aware of all that one does. If, for example, the student shuts the door in a noisy way, he thus proves that he is not aware of his being. Virtue does not lie exactly in the fact of closing the door gently, but in the awareness of the fact that one is in the process of closing the door.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

I don't want to just be a great fighter, but also a great man.

We need to look at truth. We need to look at justice, and we need to look at righteousness. And let that be our guide going forward.

I have a pretty keen ethical compass.

Beauty, to me, is kind, generous, and people that are humble.

Dishonesty of any kind will create a blemish.

Saints were saints because they acted with loving kindness whether they felt like it or not.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine qua non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, "what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?" And sometimes we use religion just to back up these unworthy hatreds, because we're frightened too.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

Once a group decides that their way is the only way, it is an easy progression to vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them. And once someone has been demonized, has been characterized as opposing the good, killing him becomes a virtue.