quotations about virtue
Virtue makes us appear amiable to others; vice, contemptible even to ourselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD
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Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
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 is no road or ready way to virtue.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
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
To Virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, tho' descended from the Conqueror.
EDWARD YOUNG
Love of Fame: The Universal Passion in Seven Characteristical Satires
Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
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
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
When we let our virtue shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
JOE EVERETT
"Creating men of virtue", The Observer, April 20, 2017
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
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
Virtue seeks the greatest distance from vice.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
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
I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
ANDRE GIDE
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
They that are virtuous from principle may receive confidence in every capacity; but they that are so from custom or habit, are capable of trust only in matters of ordinary and settled occurrence.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections