Quotes About Virtue

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

As long as the vice of gluttony has a hold on a man, all that he has done valiantly is forfeited by him: and as long as the belly is unrestrained, all virtue comes to naught.

He who has renounced all violence towards all living beings, weak or strong, who neither kills nor causes others to kill - him I do call a holy man.

The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

Honour is that which no man can give you and no man can take away.

That man is the most loyal who aims at the noblest motive, and that motive the public good.

If it were given to a man to see virtue's reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue.

Things that are holy are revealed only to men who are holy.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

There is much difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.

No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.

A holy man isn't aware that he's holy..As soon as we begin to talk about how holy we are, we aren't holy any more.

The gentleman calls attention to the good points in others; he does not call attention to their defects. The small man does just the reverse of this.

States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad.

Men fall in private long before they fall in public.

As the grace of man is in the mind, so the beauty of the mind is eloquence.

To become effective men of God, then, we must know and acknowledge that every grace and every virtue proceeds from God alone, and that not even a good thought can come from us except it be of Him.

The virtuous man is driven by responsibility, the non-virtuous man is driven by profit.

Ethical man: A Christian holding four aces.

The modest man has everything to gain, and the arrogant man everything to lose; for modesty has always to deal with generosity, and arrogance with envy.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Better to be a strong man with a weak point, than to be a weak man without a strong point. A diamond with a flaw is more valuable that a brick without a flaw.

The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.