Quotes About Virtue

So,' continued Bond, warming to his argument, 'Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.

Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.

Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.

Her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel.

Marriage was the thing, or rather, a wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and banqueting, and dizzy promise of lifelong union.

El amor sufre luengo y es amable; el amor no envidia; el amor no se jacta, no es pomposo, no se comporta de una forma indecorosa, no busca su provecho, no se deja provocar, no medita maldades; se deleita no en la iniquidad, sino en la verdad...

perfectly formed life, equally contingent, equally without purpose. Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.

She listed some relevant ingredients, goals towards which a child might grow. Economic and moral freedom, virtue, compassion and altruism, satisfying work through engagement with demanding tasks, a flourishing network of personal relationships, earning the esteem of others, pursuing larger meanings to one's existence, and having at the centre of one's life one or a small number of significant relations defined above all by love.

In one lifetime it wouldn't be possible to find another woman with whom he can learn to be so free, whom he can please with such abandon and expertise. By some accident of character, it's familiarity that excites him more than sexual novelty. He supects there's something numbed or deficient or timid in himself (...) [M]ight look like virtue or doggedness, but it's neither of these because he exercises no real choice. This is what he has to have: possession, belonging, repetition.

In that time, moral standards were high in public life and so, therefore, was hypocrisy.

I'd give him a cup of coffee and a big helping of a knuckle sandwich. Generosity was a virtue and I was in the mood to be extremely virtuous.

The kind of young woman who can be a terrific torchbearer has high standards all the time, not just in her prom dress, but every, ordinary day.

My mother was a Bible student, and when I was a youngster, both my mother and father would say, 'If people would only live by the Golden Rule, there wouldn't be the problems that there are.' In other words, 'treat people the way you want to be treated.' If somebody mistreats you, two wrongs won't make a right.

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

I don't believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you're spending your time doing something worthwhile.

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.

Development is not that you make bridges, buildings or put marble floors in your house. Real development is building moral character of youth.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

I have tried so hard to do right.

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.

I have no trouble being a good dude because that's what I am.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.