quotations about virtue
It matters not from what stock we are descended so long as we have virtue; for that alone is true Nobility.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
MARK TWAIN
Innocents Abroad
Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Virtue is the effort, the conquest of a difficulty, leaving, as its results, a balance of happiness. There may be, there is much good in the world, which no virtue has been concerned in producing. But there is no virtue where there is no balance of happiness.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.
REBECCA WEST
The Harsh Voice
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
There is nothing we abhor so much as to have to be virtuous in private.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
JOHN DRYDEN
Imitation of Horace
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
The virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth the sentinel.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Vicar of Wakefield
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Wealth is useless on the day of wrath, but virtue saves from death.
BIBLE
Proverbs 11:4
To be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations. If thou hast not conquer'd thyself in that which is thy own particular weakness, thou hast no title to virtue, tho' thou art free of other men's.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
There are some persons on whom virtue sits almost as ungraciously as vice.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
As the flower, when plucked for enjoyment, begins to wither, so does virtue practiced for reward begin to vanish.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785