Virtue

Virtue

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• Omnium rerum domina, virtus. Virtue is the mistress of all things. Virtue is the master of all things. Therefore a nation that should never do wrong must necessarily govern the world. The might of virtue, the power of virtue, is not a very common topic, not so common as it should be.
  • John Adams, Journal entry (6 August 1796)

• Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
  • Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, Life in Edwardian England (1969)

• Only Virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
  • Baltasar Gracián. In Maxim 300, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

• To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.
  • Mason Cooley, American aphorist. City Aphorisms, Fourth Selection (1987)

• Villainy wears many masks, none of which so dangerous as virtue.
  • Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) in the film, Sleepy Hollow (1999)

• To be able to practise five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue...gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
  • Confucius, Analects, fifth century B.C.

• Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide,—
  In part she is to blame that has been tried:
  He comes too near that comes to be denied.
  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), The Lady’s Resolve (1713)

• The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
  • Elizabeth Taylor, as quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23

• Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affection of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent.
  • Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)

• A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.
  • John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 CabaM and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.

• Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.
  • John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 Cababd and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.

• Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
  • Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), p. 149

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
  • James Waddel Alexander, p. 611.

• We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, p. 611.

• The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
  • Sir Walter Scott, p. 612.

• Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.
  • Isaac Barrow, p. 612.

• No state of virtue is complete, however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and even bitter experience.
  • Horace Bushnell, p. 612.

• What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.
  • Frederick William Robertson, p. 612.

• A virtuous youth and frugal manhood always create a Pisgah for the veteran in righteousness, from which he may calmly survey the stars, and read his " title clear to mansions in the skies," while yet in the flesh he can soar on the wings of meditation above the clouds, and catch glimpses of the heavenly world that lies in the placid and everlasting orient before him.
  • Elias Lyman Magoon, p. 612.

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• Virtue does not come from money, but rather from virtue comes money, and all other things good to man.
  • Socrates

• The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.
  • Blaise Pascal

• Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
  • Miguel de Cervantes

• Search others for their virtues, thy self for thy vices.
  • Benjamin Franklin

• The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.
  • Sydney J. Harris

• Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Female virtue has been held in suspicion from the beginning of the world, and ever will be.
  • Napoléon Bonaparte

• Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
  • Marcus Aurelius

• "Love supports virtue alone", say the fools. It supports vice as well
  • Valluvar in Tirukkural: 76

• Blushing is virtue’s colour.
  • English proverb. (17th Century)