Quotes About Virtue

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

Virtue is its own reward. We only invented concepts like heaven and hell to describe how we feel. We don't feel good doing bad and it's nice to help someone.

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Elegance is inferior to virtue.

Humility was considered a great virtue in my family household. No show of complacency or self-satisfaction was ever tolerated. Patting yourself on the back was definitely not encouraged, and pleasure or pride would be punishable by death.

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you're not happy. Or you're being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don't love each other; you're just there out of habit. That doesn't work, no matter how many years you stay together.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Patience, the beggar's virtue, shall find no harbor here.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Economy I consider a virtue & should be practiced by all; there is certainly no way in which money can be laid out than in the education of children.

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.