Quotes About Virtue

What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.

But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

Disobedience is man's original virtue.

What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

The more highminded a man is the more easily is his anger appeased.

It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

The silver ore of pure charity is an expensive article in the catalogue of a man's good qualities.

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

Speak but little and well, if you would be esteemed as a man of merit.

It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.

A strong, brave man is born each month, each year God gives a sage to men, A poet each ten years, perhaps, but an unselfish person,—when?

Temperance is a bridle of gold; he, who uses it rightly, is more like a god than a man.

Men are not angels, neither are they brutes.

Each must in virtue strive for to excel; That man lives twice that lives the first life well.

A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.

Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.