Quotes About Virtue

Happiness itself, being a perfection of the soul, is a good inherent in the soul: but that in which happiness consists, or the object that makes one happy, is something outside the soul.

But there are more wicked men to be found than good; according to Eccles. 1:15: "The number of fools is infinite.

God is not offended except by our acting contrary to our own good

Hence it is predicated chiefly of the virtuous; then of the pleasant; and lastly of the useful.

Human law does not prescribe concerning all the acts of every virtue: but only in regard to those that are ordainable to the common good—either immediately, as when certain things are done directly for the common good—or mediately, as when a lawgiver prescribes certain things pertaining to good order, whereby the citizens are directed in the upholding of the common good of justice and peace.

yet so that envy is not to be taken for a passion, but for a will resisting the good of another.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.

with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system.

God hath not called us that we should be unclean, but holy and virtuous.

like all wicked people he could do things which defied the means of honest men, for evil is always more easily managed than virtue.)

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.

The giving way to a less sin makes way for the committing of a greater.

Such as have made a considerable improvement of their gifts and graces, have hearts as large as their heads; whereas most men's heads have outgrown their hearts.

What virtue yet sleeps in this terra damnata and aged cinders, were petty magic to experiment. These crumbling relicks and long fired particles superannuate such expectations; bones, hairs, nails, and teeth of the dead, were the treasures of old sorcerers.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

A healthy hatred of scoundrels.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.

Our 'superior morality' is properly rather an 'inferior criminality' produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.