Virtue Quotes

You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone cannot carry themselves into practice.

The regular path of virtue is to be pursued without any bend, and from no view to emolument.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.

Virtue is the first title of nobility.

Birth is nothing where virtue is not

I maintain, in truth, That with a smile we should instruct our youth, Be very gentle when we have to blame, And not put them in fear of virtue's name.

In matters of government, justice means force as well as virtue.

The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

Rebellion per se is not a virtue. If it were, we would have some heroes on very low levels.

the virtue of imagination has this in common with the virtue of courage. Without it, you are less good: with it, you are not necessarily better.

there are virtues which are very well in the abstract, but which, encountered in the flesh, can be a source of extreme irritation.

Righteousness alone can exalt them [America] as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others.

Look within. The heart is the foundation of virtue; and it is for eternity ready to do virtuous works.

Courage is a greater virtue than love. At best, it takes courage to love.

Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.

Gold is a living god and rules in scorn, All earthly things but virtue.

Virtue, thou in rags, may challenge more than vice set off with all the trim of greatness.

It depends on education--that holder of the keys which the Almighty hath put into our hands--to open the gates which lead to virtue or to vice, to happiness or misery.

There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide to viciousness.

As the love of the heavens makes us heavenly, the love of virtue virtuous, so doth the love of the world make one become worldly.

Your virtue raises your glory above your crime.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining them.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

Beauty is the flower of virtue.

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.

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

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

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

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.

Virtue and vice are both prophets; the first, of certain good; the second, of pain or else of penitence.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

The virtue of books is to be readable.

But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds.

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

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.

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.

They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

As the Prussian historian Treitschke later complained, the proponents of free trade in Hamburg had 'in German fashion made out of necessity not just a virtue but a theory'.

It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.