Quotes About Virtue

Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever.

There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it's rather hard to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us.

Good men need no recommendation and bad men it wouldn't help.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness unless he has the strength of character to be wicked. All other goodness is generally nothing but indolence or impotence of will.

Fearful is the seductive power of goodness.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast forever One grand, sweet song.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither praise nor reward, though sure of both at last.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilence, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

The hoary beard is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness.

There was never a saint with red hair.

Virtue, like a dowerless beauty, has more admirers than followers.

Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis "good works" make the man.

Live virtuously, and you cannot die too soon, or live too long.

Conscience, as I understand it, is the impulse to do the right thing because it is right, regardless of personal ends, and has nothing whatever to do with the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Who will present pleasure refrain, shall in time to come the more pleasure obtain.

It is in virtue that happiness consists, for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.

It's a rare thing, graciousness. The shape of it can be acquired, but not, I think, the substance.

Goodwill... is an immeasurable and tremendous energy, the atomic energy of the spirit.

Real charity and a real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.

We must give alms. Charity wins souls and draws them to virtue.