Quotes About Virtue

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

The principle is that the qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him, once established, to use power wisely. There is a simple democratic theory that the best man gets the office. In American thinking this is badly mixed up with the idea that some men "deserve" office, as if the right to control other men, to blast or benefit the future, were something that should be paid over as a reward for achievement in other fields or for virtue.

It cannot be denied, but outward accidents conduce much to fortune; favour, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue: but chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands: "Faber quisque fortunæ suæ," saith the poet...

Against diseases here the strongest fence Is the defensive vertue, abstinence.

eudemonism." "Forget

Jugend hat keine Tugend

When the great scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.

The excess of virtue is a vice.

First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.

We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good—for putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. It's called 'moral vanity'.

I used to think that if you changed from … valuing one thing to valuing another, it was because you'd learnt something new, understood something better. And it's not like that at all. I just value what I'm stuck with. That's it, that's the whole story. People make a virtue out of necessity. They sanctify what they can't escape.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.   —Aristotle

He was a man who understood the virtue of small things.

I have tried so hard to do right.

It is no credit to me to do right. I am never under any temptation to do wrong!

He who wishes to preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems virtue.

But what is intelligence? Is intelligence calculations and computations? Or must true intelligence contain a moral component? Each passing minute, I believe more that this is the case.

One should never do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself. This, in brief, is the law of dharma. —Mahabharata XVIII.113.8

The concept of dharma evolved over time, its meaning shifting from a 'ritual ethics of deeds' to a more personal virtue based on one's conscience.

Dharma, the word at the heart of the epic, is in fact untranslatable. Duty, goodness, justice, law and custom all have something to do with it, but they all fall short.

Why should one like you envy Yudhishthira? . . . Be content with what you have, stay with your own dharma—that is the way to happiness. —Dhritarashtra to Duryodhana, Mahabharata II.5.3, 61

Speak only that which will bring you honor.

What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

Peoples are not governed in accordance with their caprices of the moment, but as their character determines that they shall be governed. Centuries are required to form a political system and centuries needed to change it. Institutions have no intrinsic virtue: in themselves they are neither good nor bad.