Quotes About Virtue

[V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.

A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future.

While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

The great thing is to become Saints.

The great person never loses a childlike spirit.

In success be moderate. Humility makes great men twice honourable.

Patriotism must be founded on great principals and supported by great virtue.

Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good.

You cannot become great women if you are not also good women. Great women respond generously to their instincts to do good.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

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

Great and good are seldom the same man.

A saint is one who makes goodness attractive. Surely, a great teacher does the same thing for education.

They're only truly great who are truly good.

Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.