Quotes About Virtue

If war is the test of reality, then all poetry is unreal; but in that case unreality is a virtue.

If I didn't care about doing right and didn't feel uncomfortable doing wrong, I should get on capitally.

I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue.

Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind." Chapter 1 · Page 10 · Location 202

A barometer of a moral deficit.

And good men are very threatening to not good men.

Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind.

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

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

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

Freedom, the virtue of disinterested action ('good will'), and concern for the general welfare: these are the three key concepts which define the modern morality of duty, and which Kant was to express in the form of absolute commandments, known as categorical imperatives.

Is the dwelling place of God anywhere but in the earth and sea, the air and sky, and virtue? Why seek we further for deities? Whatever you see, whatever you touch, that is Jupiter.

There was no sign of Plato, and I was told later that he had gone to live in his Republic , where he was cheerfully submitting to his own Laws . [...] None of the Stoics were present. Rumour had it that they were still clambering up the steep hill of Virtue [...]. As for the Sceptics, it appeared that they were extremely anxious to get there, but still could not quite make up their minds whether or not the island really existed.

A good mind possesses a kingdom.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.