Quotes About Virtue

No man is a man without high morals and ethics.

Sun shines with its light; flowers shine with their beauties and men shine with their goodnesses.

The goodness you do might fail; but keep doing it, because the real failure is never doing goodness!

Visit the port of goodness often; if you can, cast your anchor over there!

What makes a man heavy is the gravity of virtue. Without it, man will be so light that he will be drifted in the winds of immorality.

People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctified our works.

If what is in the blood conquers the flesh, then one is humble, patient, chaste and has every virtue. If the flesh conquers the blood, however, one is proud, angry and shameless, having every kind of vice.

The Greek poets had praised virtue as taking several specific forms: wisdom; courage; moderation; justice; and piety.

Yet in its life, for eight hundred years, virtue alone, that one word, has illuminated and explained something of what we think we are, it has enriched our description of ourselves, uncovered yet more of the human condition which seems to crave infinite description. It is not just a word but a little history of our thought and actions. Virtue might or might not be its own reward. It was certainly ours.

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.

Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.

Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge are not infused into us from without.

All men have in themselves that which is truly honorable. Only they do not think of it.

Benevolence is man's mind, and righteousness is man's path.

Sincerity is the way of Heaven.

He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.

Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path.

There is no attribute of the superior man greater than his helping men to practice virtue.

Friendship with a man is friendship with his virtue, and does not admit of assumptions of superiority.

The superior man will not manifest either narrow-mindedness or the want of self-respect.

From the feelings proper to it, [man's nature] is constituted for the practice of what is good.

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute, he simply speaks and does what is right.

Character determines fate.

He who devises evil for another falls at last into his own pit, and the most cunning finds himself caught by what he had prepared for another. But virtue without guile, erect like the lofty palm, rises with greater vigour when it is oppressed.