Virtue Quotes

• What is virtue? It is to hold yourself to your fullest development as a person and as a responsible member of the human community. -Arthur Dobrin
• There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy. -Amos Bronson Alcott
• For most men, and most circumstances, please--tangible material prosperity in this world--is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to ascetism. -Samuel Butler
• Ethical living is the indispensable condition of all that is most worthwhile in the world. -Ernest Caldecott
• When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily their victims or their disciples; on the contrary, when we associate with the virtuous we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or at least lose, every day, something of our faults. -Agapet
• The door to virtue is heavy and hard to push. -Chinese Proverb
• The more virtuous any man is, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious. -Cicero
• He that has energy enough to root out a vice, should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place, otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat. -Charles Caleb Colton
• Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another. -Charles Caleb Colton
• Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. ~Horace Mann, "Thoughts for a Young Man," 1859
• We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice. ~Henry David Thoreau
• Blushing is the color of virtue. ~Diogenes
• Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm. ~Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, 1762
• Virtue is insufficient temptation. ~George Bernard Shaw
• Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. ~Henry David Thoreau
• He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place. ~Charles Caleb Colton
• Modesty and unselfishness - these are virtues which men praise - and pass by. ~André Maurois, Ariel, 1924
• Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
• Virtue is its own revenge. ~E.Y. Harburn
• All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. ~Theodore M. Hesburgh
• The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can't separate them. They're wedded. ~Henry Miller
• Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company. ~François de la Rochefoucauld
• A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined. ~Anne Petry
• What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. ~Voltaire
• Sin is commitable in thought, word or deed; so is virtue. ~Martin H. Fischer
• To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
• Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us. ~Robert S. Lynd
• The excess of virtue is a vice. ~Greek Proverb
• Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues. ~Hugh Prather
• They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny a sun because it is not always day. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
• Water which is too pure has no fish. ~Ts'ai Ken T'an
• On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. ~George Orwell
• It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays. ~Edith Sitwell
• Some folks wear their halos much too tight. ~Author Unknown
• What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean. ~Christopher Fry
• We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them. ~La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665