Quotes About Virtue

Nothing has ever moulded our conscience so strongly as our knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

People who act like angels ought to have angels to deal with.

Even in this glowering age, morality animates our lives with meaning.

I'm not sure anything makes you an outright good person or bad person - that we're all capable of doing good or bad things. And if you want to know how much good you can do, and how much hurt you can do, just ask somebody you love.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

The system has become corrupt. It's working backwards. It's not advancing the most worthy among us, the most virtuous, the hardest working, the most humble, the smartest, even the strongest, but the most devious, the best liars, the sociopaths and narcissists,

Virtus, the quality of a vir, was the ultimate Roman ideal, that lustrous fusion of energy and courage which the Romans themselves identified as their chiefest strength.

Yet there was, in this same exercise of clemency, more than a whiff of what made so many of his peers resent and detest him. Merciful he may have been – but mercy was properly the virtue of a master. Caesar felt no call to apologise for his dominance.

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice

There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue.

Honesty is the best image.

Character is something you do when no one else is watching.

But the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion. A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.

If what you're sowing isn't evil, you should have nothing to fear.

How nice it feels to be good," she thought quietly.

there is no test in getting what you want when you want it; the true test of character transpires in the waiting. Dwell on this in moments of despair.' Mathu vanished an instant before the doctor and the constable entered the Abbey ruins, and I had an inkling that this was not the last I would see of my Fey brother.

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

So the disciple of Proverbs will acquire discipline that will produce a prudent life, and that prudent life will be demonstrated by "doing what is right and just and fair.

The answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.

To be good, we must do good; and by doing good we take a sure means of being good, as the use and exercise of the muscles increase their power.

I think being humble is sexy.

Virtue should always be colmingled with humor.

Goodness deliberately chooses to do the right thing and firmly resists what is wrong. Merely avoiding bad things doesn't make women good.