Quotes About Virtue

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals.

Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.

Too many strive for the unachievable, and this pursuit consumes them. They rush frantic and desperate and so reveal weakness in the face of sadness. More than weakness, in fact. It is in truth a kind of cowardice, that which espouses an evasive disposition as if it were a virtue.

Thus,' he added with a sorrowful smile, 'the opening of my heart proves, once more, a curse. Claiming those I care for, by virtue of that very emotion. Would that I had learned my lesson long ago

Is possession a virtue? Is a lifetime of working for some rich toad a virtue? Is loyal employment in some merchant house a virtue? Loyal to what? To whom? Oh, have they paid for that loyalty with a hundred docks a week? Like any other commodity? But then, which version is truer – the virtue of self-serving acquisitiveness or the virtue of loyalty to one's employer? Are

Sacrifice must be weighed by the pain of what is surrendered, and this alone was the true measure of a virtue's worth.

Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin.

indeed no virtue of pragmatism was possible in matters of the soul, and might even prove anathema to the very notion of the sacred.

if there be callous ones among them, ah, what is it that you fear to reveal? There in that tear, that low sob? You smile in superiority, but what is the nature of this triumph of yours? I wish to know. Your self-made chains draped so tight about you are nothing to be proud of. Your inability to feel is not a virtue. And your smile has cracks.

Madam, let's not be so crass. We're Terrans, after all, forever virtuous, eternally right in all matters of comportment, wise and clever, honest and forthright, inclined to modest errors in judgement while maintaining our heartfelt desire to do good and therefore entirely capable of sweeping under the carpet all the genocidal horrors studding our history in the galaxy.

The scar around an old wound feels nothing." "To feel nothing is not a virtue.

When you play a soldier, you play it to the hilt. Nobody talks about what's obvious. Something staring you in the eye, you look around it and grumble about the weather. Anything important will come out in its own time. Soldiers have nothing to look forward to, making patience an easy virtue, and sometimes it's not just a virtue, but a contest of indifference.

Las civilizaciones se aseguraban de que sus héroes estuviesen muertos antes de honrarlos. La virtud era cosa de los muertos, no de los vivos.

The perfect hero is one whose heroism none sees. The most precious glory is the glory lost on senseless winds. The highest virtue is the one that remains for ever hidden within oneself.

Obedience had never been deemed a pure virtue among the Tiste Andii. To follow must be an act born of deliberation, of clear-eyed, cogent recognition that the one to be followed has earned the privilege. So often, after all, formal structures of hierarchy stood in place of such personal traits and judgements. A title or rank did not automatically confer upon the one wearing it any true virtue, or even worthiness to the claim. Nimander

Humans insisted on others behaving properly, but rarely forced the same standards upon themselves. Justifications dispensed with logic, thriving on opportunism and delusions of pious propriety.

What makes me worse than any other corpse?' 'Other corpses don't fight back, for one thing.' The undead woman came closer. 'Why would I feel compelled to resist? Is she not simply making me pretty?' 'Of course. I was just making conversation. And how have you been, Shurq Elalle?' 'The same.' 'The same. Which is?' 'I've been better. Still, many would call consistency a virtue.

I think I understand. Before there can be disdain, there must be pride. One day I will find something to be proud of, and then I will find this taste of disdain, and see if it suits me. Should I not think this, being my father's son? And yet, I do not. Pride needs no claws, no scaled armour about itself. Not every virtue must be a weapon. These thoughts are my own. I will not crush them.

Of course, he was too busy spilling an endless flood of seed into a barely sensate and in no way resisting Captain Sater down in his cabin, and this, as all well know, is the pinnacle of all human virtue, glory and exaltation.

At what point in the history of Letheras, he wondered, did rampant greed become a virtue? The level of self-justification required was staggering in its tautological complexity, and it seemed language itself was its greatest armour against common sense.

What feeds you is rent With the claws of your need. But needs dwell half in light And half in darkness. And virtue folds in the seam. If the demand of need is life Then suffering and death hold purpose. But if we speak of want and petty desire The seam folds into darkness And no virtue holds the ground. Needs and wants make for a grey world. But nature yields no privilege. And what is righteous will soon Feed itself with the claws Of your need, as life demands. QUALITIES OF LIFE SAEGEN