quotations about virtue
Virtue seems to be nothing more than a motion consonant to the system of things. Were a planet to fly from its orbit, it would represent a vicious man.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Virtue is not always amiable.
JOHN ADAMS
diary, February 9, 1779
Many a man gets a big reputation for Virtue and Morality, when if the truth were known, the poor boob was simply scared of getting caught.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
And as we perceive that virtue assumes a multitude of diverse forms, this variety discovered in intelligent beings convinces us that the most perfect Being is He who unites in Himself the greatest number, or the sum total, of all these perfections.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
Most virtues lie between two vices.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
To struggle for virtue, is to be virtuous.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Virtue!--to be good and just--
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin
There is no real felicity for man, but in reforming all his errors and vices, and entering upon a strict and constant course of Virtue.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist