Quotes About Virtue

You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

Strength of character may be acquired at work, but beauty of character is learned at home.

Quality of work is directly related to the quality of a person's character.

Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God.

Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything.

Let us work without desire for name or fame or rule over others. Let us be free from the triple bonds of lust, greed of gain, and anger. And this truth is with us!

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness.

The highest and best work of imagination is the marvelous transformation that it works in character. Imagine that you are one with the principal of good, and you will become truly good.

You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.

There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.

In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

A virtuous man concentrates on his own work, not that of others.

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

That's what heroic stories do for us. They show us the way. They remind us of the good we are capable of.

What is character? It is that quality of man which is going to make a man, in an hour of strain, do the just and, if possible, the generous thing.

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

The majority have no right to do wrong.

The idea of truth as a consolation is a real one. We all face a death sentence, and we all want to believe in something that is demonstrably true. Religion in the shape of an institution, a set of dogmas and a body of doctrine, is not in this sense a help: it demands an act of faith, an acceptance that it must be true, even if, or especially because, empirical evidence is not available, and anyway, if you could see it was unarguably true, what would be the virtue of faith?

Men, and pigs, are hard on women who sacrifice their virtue, especially for love." Mattis Tannhouser

Unexpected situations are often matched by unexpected virtues, are they not?

A good character may not make us happy, but it does make us worthy of happiness (XXV 1174). He also maintains that people of character have an inner worth, while people of talent have a market value (XXV 1174), and emphasizes that this worth is created by the person himself. Most importantly, however, he claims that character 'consists in the basic characteristic [GrundAnlage] of the will' (XXV 1174).