Virtue Quotes

Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue.

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.

The virtue of a piece is the writer’s thoughts.

He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.

Who, under pressing temptations to lie, adheres to truth, nor to the profane betrays aught of a sacred trust, is near the summit of wisdom and virtue.

Conscience is the virtue of the observers not the agents of action

The absence of temptation is the absence of virtue.

The sun alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty (of moving the planets) and worthy to become the home of God himself.

Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation, thoroughly corrupted, that was afterwards restored to virtue? And without virtue there can be no political liberty.

Virtue is not always amiable.

Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.

Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.

If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

It is an observation of one of the profoundest inquirers into human affairs that a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.

The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.

Stirner and Nietzsche ... reveal how prone morality is to being used as a means of rationalization, a cloak for concealing violent and brutish passions, and making their sadistic expression a virtue.

Who knows his virtues name or place, hath none.

Virtue is her own reward.

Humility and resignation are our prime virtues.

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

'Tis virtue, and not birth that makes us noble: Great actions speak great minds, and such should govern.

Shall ignorance of good and ill Dare to direct the eternal will? Seek virtue, and of that possest, To Providence resign the rest.

Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

I see loyalty - roughly perseverance in relational commitments despite the cost of such perseverance - as an important human value/virtue. Think of it as a kind of relational glue.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.

Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.

Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue.

The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

Wealth and honours, which most men pursue, easily change masters; they desert to the side which excels in virtue, industry, and endurance of toil, and they abandon the slothful.

Enflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

I hate when vice can bolt her arguments, And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.

The conquer'd, also, and enslaved by war, Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose.

Virtue hath no tongue to check vice's pride.

Her virtue and the conscience of her worth, That would be woo'd, and not unsought be won.

It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, That woman's love can win, or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say, Harder to hit.

And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed Alone, without exterior help sustained?

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Barack Obama is America. The first true American to lead our nation.

All you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it. The real and essential meaning of "virtue" is that straightness of back.

Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

If the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be signs of antiquity.

Society has sacrificed its virtues to the Goddess of Getting Along.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

True virtue, wheresoever it moves, still carries an intrinsic worth about it.

Love, like virtue, is its own reward.

Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue.