Quotes About Virtue

Teach the art of living well.

Y a-t-il plus belle parodie de l'éthique de la valeur que de se soumettre avec toute l'intransigeance de la vertu aux données du hasard ou à l'absurdité d'une règle?

We live under a prince who is an enemy to fraud, a prince whose eyes penetrate into the heart, and whom all the art of impostors can't deceive.

Virtue runs before the muse, and defies her skill; she is rapt and doth refuse to wait a painter's will.

In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.

The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.

If a novel's salient aim is virtue, I want to throw it against the wall.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Right attitudes produces right action

It is good people who make good places

There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.

Believe in the immortality and everlasting effects of your goodness.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

Kant's system of duties constitutes a Doctrine of Virtue because the duties also indicate what kinds of attitudes, dispositions and feelings are morally virtuous or vicious.

You don't need to show off your body to catch a boy's eye. You'd best learn that early on, or you'll be bringing home the worst sort of boy.

Crooked, grasping, evil-hearted people were easy to find. Honest, concerned, self-sacrificing people were harder to come by.

What if virtue, work, all our striving and sweat was simply not enough to make the animal man a happy creature?

Sam Spade: You're a good man, sister.

As the old saying goes, if you have integrity, nothing else matters. But if you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

In some ways, it was far easier to be bad than good. When you're bad, you don't care what happens to anyone other than yourself. When you're trying to do god, you have to worry about everyone.

supremely noble act in a world more and more devoid of anything remotely virtuous.

This is what I discovered during my imprisonment. I saw the human character in its naked form. I saw at one end a narrow rank of villainy, and at the other a narrow rank of virtue. In the middle was everyone else. And I understood that the state of the world is the result of the struggle between these two extremes.

humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole—family, religion, or a leader. Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint.

T]he road to character is built by confronting your own weakness.