Quotes About Virtue

Good actions lead to success, as good medicines to a cure: a healthy man is joyful, and a diligent man attains learning; a just man gains the reward of his virtue.

Like an earthen pot, a bad man is easily broken, and cannot readily be restored to his former situation; but a virtuous man, like a vase of gold, is broken with difficulty, and easily repaired.

Skill in advising others is easily attained by men; but to practise righteousness themselves is what only a few can succeed in doing.

He who can feel ashamed will not readily do wrong.

He who carries out one good deed acquires one advocate in his own behalf, and he who commits one transgression acquires one accuser against himself. Repentance and good works are like a shield against calamity.

Mention not a blemish which is thy own in detraction of a neighbour.

Never put thyself in the way of temptation: even David could not resist it.

There are three things which, in great quantity, are bad, and, in little, very good: leaven, salt, and liberality.

Intelligence is a moral category.

Statistics are like women; mirrors of purest virtue and truth, or like whores to use as one pleases.

Die Jugend, auch in ihren Fehlern ist sie noch schön und liebenswürdig, und das Alter, auch in seinen Tugenden taugt es nicht viel.

Die Jugend, auch in ihren Fehlern ist sie noch schön und liebenswürdig, und das Alter, auch in seinen Tugenden taugt es nicht viel. (S.52)

Restraints upon our natural inclinations, which left to themselves do not automatically lead us to do what is good for us and often indeed lead us to evil, are not only necessary; they are the indispensable condition of civilized existence.

Most men and women must suppress the good within them to be evil; just as, to be good, they must suppress the evil. There is no final victory of one or the other. Indeed

The prevention of evil will always require more than desirable social arrangements: it will forever require personal self-control and the conscious limitation of appetites.

Like all other virtues, patriotism when carried to excess becomes a vice; but that does not mean that patriotism is incompatible with respect for others.

ideological aim: to subvert the very concept and deny the possibility of virtue, and therefore of the necessity for restraint.

In the light of the world's attitude toward woman and her duties, the nature of Carrie's mental state deserves consideration. Actions such as hers are measured by an arbitrary scale. Society possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things. All men should be good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed?

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock.

gratitude is a nice touch of beauty added last of all to the countenance, giving a classic beauty, an angelic loveliness, to the character.

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.

It was a pleasure to deal with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything mean and base, and who possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone.

No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us.