Quotes
Quotes about Virtue
All government--indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act--is founded on compromise and barter.
Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard, and many a time Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil.
A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues. [Lat., Gratus animus est una virtus non solum maxima, sed etiam mater virtutum onmium reliquarum.]
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
Great abilities produce great vices as well as virtues.
"Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man unless he can erect himself above humanity." Here is a bon mot and a useful desire, but equally absurd. For to make the handful bigger than the hand, the armful bigger then the arm, and to hope to stride further than the stretch of our legs, is impossible and monstrous. . . . He may lift himself if God lend him His hand of special grace; he may lift himself . . . by means wholly celestial. It is for our Christian religion, and not for his Stoic virtue, to pretend to this divine and miraculous metamorphosis.
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fix'd, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix'd.
One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence. Moreover, that in that does happiness consist. Victor Hugo -Diogenes Laertius.
A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.
Like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, the fiercest hatred is silent.
The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is silent. [Ger., Der grosste Hass ist, wie die grosste Tugend und die schlimmsten Hunde, still.]
Love blinds us to faults, but hatred blinds us to virtues.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Be not ashamed of thy virtues; honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
Lowliness is the base of every virtue, And he who goes the lowest builds the safest.
Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot.
Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh, for a hymn Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, Not practise!
Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue. [Fr., L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend a la vertu.]
So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue That, his apparent open guilt omitted-- I mean, his conversation with Shore's wife-- He lived from all attainder of suspects.
Exaggerated self-importance is deemed an individual fault, but a racial virtue.
Spontaneously to God should turn the soul, Like the magnetic needle to the pole; But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge, Fresh from St. Andrew's College, Should nail the conscious needle to the north?
He that's ungrateful has no guilt but one; All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.
Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.
