Quotes About Virtues

I scoffed at such old fashioned notions as duty, patriotism, the military virtues. And here I was, aged fifty, standing on guard at the very edge of the known world. To protect what? A hundred or so mud and wattle huts, three hundred savage strangers who do not even speak my tongue. And, of course, my own skin.

Now, another way to think about this is that Shakespeare's ego was so very insatiable he thought he could speak for everybody: a black duke, a transvestite girl, a carefree prince, a mad king. But we tend not to think of it that way, in Britain, instead we consider Shakespeare's breed of impersonality among the highest literary virtues.

In short, your good points will become your faults, your faults will be vices, and your virtues crime.

SOCIETY PRACTISES NONE of the virtues it demands from individuals: every hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by ridicule;

Politics, as he occasionally said, required three unchanging talents and no virtues. More politicians, he claimed, had been destroyed by virtue than by any other cause; and the talents he enumerated in this fashion. The first talent was the ability to choose the winning side. Failing that, the second talent was the ability to extricate oneself from the losing side. And the third talent was never to make an enemy.

Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)

Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.

If one does not have these five things there is no good in him: intellect, religion, etiquette, shame and good manners.

Patience, gratitude and generosity are the only three components you need to live in pure contentment.

I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one in the same.

What is it with these prophets? Almost without exception ordinary men, some of them with more vices than virtues, suddenly they were touched with fire. Is it that a man sees best the stars when he is prone?

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.

I had seen the Titan's weakness: She had the vices of her virtues.

Sacramento was the least typical of the Valley towns, and it is—but only because it is bigger and more diverse, only because it has had the rivers and the legislature; its true character remains the Valley character, its virtues the Valley virtues, its sadness the Valley sadness.

The keys to happiness are three: 1- Being grateful when blessed. 2- Being patient when tried. 3- Hasting to repent when one sins.

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

Three key humanist virtues are courage, cognition, and caring - not dependence, ignorance, or insensitivity to the needs of others.

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.

Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

Chastity prays for me, piety sings, Innocence sweetens my last black breath, Modesty hides my thighs in her wings, And all the deadly virtues plague my death!