Quotes About Virtue

The morality we all grew up with and are accustomed to is what feels right.

If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.

We've had other things come up in their place, but I don't think' anything beats morals.

My morals are important to me.

I'll never go against my morals.

God's most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

The first and most important thing a man should keep away from is not doing harm of any kind knowingly to anyone, at any time.

if one follows one's self-interest one wants to be safe, whereas the path of justice and honour involves one in danger.

For these reasons or reasons very like them he was killed who, of all the Hellenes in my time, least deserved to come to so miserable an end, since the whole of his life had been devoted to the study and the practice of virtue.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. REINHOLD NIEBUHR

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

You, without sin, are like the sun You, even with sin, are like the sun

There was nothing like an appeal to honor. It was a virtue that all craved, even those who lacked it. Fundamentally, honor was itself a debt, a code of behavior, a promise, something inside yourself that you owed to the others who saw it in you.

There was nothing like an appeal to honor. It was a virtue that all craved, even those who lacked it. Fundamentally, honor was itself a debt, a code of behavior, a promise, something inside yourself that you owed to the others who saw it in you. Everyone in this room wanted all the others to look and see a person worthy of respect and trust, and honor.

If being alive is not a virtue, then there is little virtue in virtue.

It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shameful miracle. White people liked that idea because Negroes with money and sense made them nervous. Colored people liked it because, in those days, they trusted poverty, believed it was a virtue and a sure sign of honesty. Too much money had a whiff of evil and somebody else's blood.

God's generosity is nowhere better seen than in the gift of patience.

We tend to overlook goodness, but we must put goodness front and center in our lives.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap.

A godly woman's true adornment can't be bought at a department store or acquired in the beauty shop.

and I am grateful for my heart, that turned out to be good, after all

Don't let just any man have your grace.' Patience was spinning flax. 'Mariah, you keep yourself for a good man.' Mariah could hear the wheel rattle and whirl, rattle and whirl. 'A good man. Like your pa. On top of him being good, he needs to be a true love.' 'How to know a true love?' 'When you get beyond the moonstruck stage and you hit a rough patch, but you can't stay mad at him for long.

I never wanted to be safe... I wanted to be good.