quotations about virtue
Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
DEPECHE MODE
"Judas"
Virtue is as good as a thousand shields.
LATIN PROVERB
Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The most precious treasure is virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
The noblest gain from virtue springs,
And virtue joy unending brings.
VALMIKI
The Ramayan
The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
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
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
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
Virtue wears well in any garb.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Most of our virtues are gouty from lack of exercise.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Aurora
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
The safeguards of virtue are hateful to the evil disposed.
AESOP
"The Thieves and the Cock", Aesop's Fables
However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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
Virtue, like beauty, is commonly only skin deep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought