Quotes About Virtue

No, Professor, it aint nothin like that. You dont have to be virtuous. You just has to be quiet. I cant speak for the Lord but the experience I've had leads me to believe that he'll speak to anybody that'll listen. You damn sure aint got to be virtuous.

He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?

He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?

There wasn't any virtue in it. The drinking or the quittin? Either one. There aint no virtue in quittin what you aint able any longer to do in the first place.

To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.

It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The

Whatever you are, be a good one. -Curtis Sittenfeld (American Wife)

Easterners didn't really care? Niceness for its own sake wasn't a virtue to them.

the erroneous notion that if one choice, one plan, was hard and the other was easy, doing the hard thing was inherently better—worthier, more upstanding.

I am respected by others not because of my virtue but because of my clothing.' Foolish people respect others in this way.

Shakespeare said, "Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Lincoln did not belong to any church, and avoided religious discussions even with his best friends. However, he once told Herndon that his religious code was like that of an old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he had heard speak at a church meeting, and who said: "When I do good, I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.

And it might be well to assume and state openly that other people have the virtue you want them to develop. Give them a fine reputation to live up to, and they will make prodigious efforts rather than see you disillusioned.

I will speak ill of no man," he said, " … and speak all the good I know of everybody.

The man who is wise enough to know the right thing to do, who is good enough to wish to do only the right thing, and who is able and strong enough to do the right thing is a truly great man.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

Names are the turning point of who shall be master. - There is so much virtue in names that a nation which produces its own names, haughtily adheres to them, and subordinates others to them, leads all the rest of the nations of the earth. - I also promulge that a nation which has not its own names, but begs them of other nations, has no identity, marches not in front but behind.

Those who met with greater economic success in life were responsible to help those in genuine need; but those who from lack of virtue failed to pull their own weight could expect no help from society.

Grace was a good man

Industry and frugality," he wrote in describing the theme of Poor Richard's almanacs, are "the means of procuring wealth and thereby securing virtue.

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did . . . that we did good to our fellow creatures.

We must remember that this is a very small star," he responded, "and probably some of the larger and more important stars may be very virtuous and happy."73

Josiah practiced the art, which his son would perfect, of marrying public virtue with private profit: he made money by selling candles to the night watchmen he oversaw.

His ideal was of a prosperous middle class whose members lived simple lives of democratic equality," writes James Campbell. "Those who met with greater economic success in life were responsible to help those in genuine need; but those who from lack of virtue failed to pull their own weight could expect no help from society.