Quotes About Virtue

Compendiaria res improbitas, virtusque tarda—the villainous takes the short road, virtue the longer one. In other words, cutting corners is dishonest.

the highest form of virtue is unpopular.

The good is not as good as the absence of bad.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

The challenge for people today--and it is not and easy one--is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

Self-reliance and self-responsibility were seen as supremely appropriate in this new order of things, in contrast to the conformity and obedience more valued in earlier, tribal societies. Independence became an economically adaptive virtue.

This love is the beginning of virtue. It is the launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations. It is the motive power that drives the six pillars. It is the seventh pillar of self-esteem.

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.

They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Benevolence is the twin of pride.

El ángel y apóstol de la revelación venidera debía ser una mujer, sin duda, pero una mujer virtuosa, pura, hermosa, sabia y prudente, todo ello no a través de una oscura pena sino a la luz de la alegría, poniendo de manifiesto, con la verdad de su ejemplo, cómo el amor consagrado debe hacernos felices.

there was something of the women molded into the great, stalwart frame of Hollingsworth; nor was he ashamed of it; as men often are of what is best in them

Lo! there ye stand, my children, said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.

Since republics rely on the inherent virtue of the people, they are exceedingly fragile. All it takes is one well-placed person to destroy everything. Washington, his face betraying the sadness, anger, and shock of this most recent revelation, turned to Lafayette and asked, "Whom can we trust now?

As Thomas Jefferson wrote the following year, "the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.

What Mayer did in the thirties? what he was situated to do as a Jew yearning to belong? was provide reassurance against the anxieties and disruptions of the time. He did this by fashioning a vast, compelling national fantasy out of his dreams and out of the basic tenets of his own dogmatic faith? a belief in virtue, in the bulwark of family, in the merits of loyalty, in the soundness of tradition, in America itself.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

I'm decent to everyone, Rowan pointed out. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a decent person.

We're not all evil, the man says. Neither are we,, Jeevan responds.

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!

Minutes, blithesome mortal, are bits of ore That you must not release without extracting the gold!  Remember, Time is a greedy player Who wins without cheating, every round! It's the law. The daylight wanes; the night deepens; remember! The abyss thirsts always; the water-clock runs low.  Soon will sound the hour when divine Chance, When august Virtue, your still virgin wife, When even Repentance (the very last of inns!), When all will say: Die, old coward! it is too late!