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 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 most precious treasure is virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Virtue is as good as a thousand shields.
LATIN PROVERB
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
DEPECHE MODE
"Judas"
The noblest gain from virtue springs,
And virtue joy unending brings.
VALMIKI
The Ramayan
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
Most of our virtues are gouty from lack of exercise.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
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
Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword.
BRET HARTE
"The Legends of the Rhine"
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
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
The safeguards of virtue are hateful to the evil disposed.
AESOP
"The Thieves and the Cock", Aesop's Fables
Virtue is the conformity of our affections and actions with the public good, or the voluntary production of the greatest happiness in ourselves and others.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine