Quotes About Virtue

The life of Balance is difficult. It lies on the verge of continual temptation, its perpetual adjustments become fatiguing, its measured virtue is monotonous and uninspiring.

You can dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full environment. Such a soul for a time may have a "name to live." Its character may betray no sign of atrophy. But its very virtue somehow has the pallor of a flower that is grown in darkness, or as the herb which has never seen the sun, no fragrance breathes from its spirit.

You ought to live in such a way that you would be perfectly happy to have everything that you do known. And if you don't do that, maybe you'd better change a little bit.

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with an excellency of heart.

No acquisitions of guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward comfort of mind, which is the sure companion of innocence and virtue; nor can in the least balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in their room, guilt introduces into our bosoms.

Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.

Your religion...serves you only for an excuse for your faults, but is no incentive to your virtue.

her patience was, perhaps, tired out; for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise.

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength, and national independence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition.

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.

A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.

We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.

If the Emperor strayed from the path of virtue, All Under Heaven would fall into chaos. Even natural catastrophes might signify that disharmony had beset the universe. The existing dynasty would be seen to have lost the "Mandate of Heaven" by which it possessed the right to govern: rebellions would break out, and a new dynasty would restore the Great Harmony of the universe.19

If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character

To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us and surely it is a good haven to sail for.

Be noble in every thought And in every deed!

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.

God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.