Virtue Quotes

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

There must be in prudence also some master virtue.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use

We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

Those who believe that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.

If, therefore, there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of performing the best actions, him we ought to follow and obey, but he must have the capacity for action as well as virtue.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.

Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

What is virtue? It is to hold yourself to your fullest development as a person and as a responsible member of the human community

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.

The virtue of Paganism was strength: the virtue of Christianity is obedience.

Let them (the wicked) see the beauty of virtue, and pine at having forsaken her. [Lat., Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.]

You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values; their virtues.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

I cannot worship the abstractions of virtue: she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.

This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

I think no virtue goes with size;The reason of all cowardiceIs, that men are overgrown,And, to be valiant, must come downTo the titmouse dimension.

There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when it is crushed.

I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

There is no bounty to be showed to such As have real goodness: Bounty is A spice of virtue; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it?

One who has accumulated virtue will certainly also possess eloquence; but he who has eloquence doe not necessarily possess virtue.

Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.

It is all a mistake that we cannot be good and manly without being scrupulously and studiously good. There is too much mechanism about our virtue.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

While selfishness joins hands with no one of the virtues, benevolence is allied to them all.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

When a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again.

Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I have not seen the case in which his strength would be sufficient.

Actions receive their tincture from the times, And as they change are virtues made or crimes

Even if I could, I would not exahnge their virtues for my own. And that is why they are intent on learning from me.

Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.

If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfil the requirements of that name?

If doing what ought to be done be made the first business and success a secondary consideration--is not this the way to exalt virtue?

I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty.

People with virtue must speak out; People who speak are not all virtuous.