Quotes About Virtue

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Good people aren't good because they never cause harm to others. They're good because they treat others the best way they know how, with the understanding that they have.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

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.

A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself

But then, I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong.

How do men become manly, if not by putting it on as an act until it becomes habit and then, finally, their character?

My husband is a good man, she said. It's important to him to be a good man. He has to not only be good, he has to believe that he's good. In the eyes of God, in my eyes, in his parents' eyes, in his own eyes. Good.

I don't know what's going on in the world, he said. Everything seemed so reasonable and scientific until I discovered my son was a fraud with the ability to hide my own memories from me. And now you come along. The captain at the gate told me you were executed and buried yesterday. He spoke to you? He didn't say a word to me, I said. Don't change the subject, young man. I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature. Nature's virtue is intact. I just know some different laws.

I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong.

Only a wise man could see my people so clearly in so short a time. Only a ruthless one would say it all out loud. Your virtue and your flaw – we need them both.

And I never believe a man who says he never lies. A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself, said Taleswapper.

It would be so much easier if I weren't determined to do what's best for everybody. Whoever said virtue was its own reward was full of crap.

Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, And treat each other kindly, And live simple generous lives?

If I could make my heart hard, said Alvin, I'd be a worse man, but a happier one.

The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.