Quotes About Virtue

It is your manner, my dear. When a young man comes up to speak to you, you look so serious that a spiteful person might believe you doubtful of your own virtue. You seem to fear lest a smile should undo you. You really look as if you were asking forgiveness of God for the sins that may be committed around you. The world, my dearest, is not a convent. — But, as you mentioned your dress, I may confess to you that it is no less a duty to conform to the customs and fashions of Society.

Le malheur est une espèce de talisman dont la vertu consiste à corroborer notre constitution primitive : il augmente la défiance et la méchanceté chez certains hommes, comme il accroît la bonté de ceux qui ont un cœur excellent.

Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no religious observances.

L'un des malheurs auxquels sont soumises les grandes intelligences, c'est de comprendre forcément toutes choses, les vices aussi bien que les vertus.

Everything can be excused and justified in an age which has transformed vice into virtue and virtue into vice.

Every one esteemed Pons with his kindness and his modesty, his great self-respect and respect for others; for a pure and limpid life wins something like admiration from the worst nature in every social sphere, and in Paris a fair virtue meets with something of the success of a large diamond, so great a rarity it is. No actor, no dancer however brazen, would have indulged in the mildest practical joke at the expense of either Pons or Schmucke.

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.

Prudenta lui ii egala averea. Era de o umilinta excesiva. Niciodata orgoliul nu-l prinsese in capcanele sale. Acest negustor se facea atat de mic, de bland, de placut si de sarac la curte, in fata printeselor, regilor si favoritilor, incat aceasa modestie si bonomie ii pazisera afacerea.

The pure in life and free from sin.

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

A man without a flaw.

Christ does not dress up a moral picture, and ask you to observe its beauty. He only tells you how to live; and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen, have been those who received and lived these precepts without once conceiving their beauty.

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency in sin. It is just that negative species of virtue which consists in not doing what is scandalously depraved and wicked. But there is no heart of holy principle in it, any more than there is in the grosser sin.

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.

It is well to think well: it is divine to act well.

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.

Sincerity and truth form the basis of every virtue. Be what thou seemest; live thy creed; Hold up to earth the torch divine; Be what thou prayest to be made; Let the great Master's steps be thine.

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

Moved by deep love, a man is courageous. And with frugality, a man becomes generous. And he who does not desire to be ahead of the world becomes the leader of the world.