quotations about virtue
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or cursed,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all th' advantage prosp'rous vice attains,
'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
DEPECHE MODE
"Judas"
The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The noblest gain from virtue springs,
And virtue joy unending brings.
VALMIKI
The Ramayan
Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
The habit of virtue is a fire-drill in a school which leads confused children through smoke to safety.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The most precious treasure is virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Virtue wears well in any garb.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
The great reason why false virtues pass so well in the world is, that true ones are so seldom near to compare them with.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
While bars and bolts may baffle the thief, virtue alone will defeat the slanderer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Every deed of dishonor, every victim of vice, every ghastly spectacle of crime, is an eloquent testimony to the need and the worth of virtue.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.
CONFUCIUS
The Doctrine of the Mean
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Aurora
Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
Overt and apparent virtues, bring forth praise; but there be secret and hidden virtues, that bring forth fortune; certain deliveries of a man's self, which have no name.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Fortune", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword.
BRET HARTE
"The Legends of the Rhine"