quotations about virtue
Freedom that rejects virtue is really enslavement. Freedom from virtue is self-defeating, no matter how appealing it may appear when it is marketed.
DONALD DEMARCO
"A Modest Proposal for an Immodest Culture", National Catholic Register, April 22, 2017
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Some people have an idea that virtue exists only where the blood is cold.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour Himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Martin Van Buren, June 29, 1824
They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by whom alone it can be given, and the whole crowd of false gods vanishes.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
A virtuous woman has in her heart one fibre less or one fibre more than other women; she is either stupid or sublime.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
This is the tax a man must pay to his virtues--they hold up a torch to his vices, and render those frailties notorious in him, which would have passed without observation in another.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
Virtue only is the true beauty.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
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
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
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
If virtue holds the secret, don't defer;
Be off with pleasure, and be on with her.
HORACE
Epistles
Conduciveness to happiness being then the test of virtue, and all happiness being composed of our own happiness and that of others, the production of our own happiness is prudence, the production of the happiness of others is effective benevolence. The tree of virtue is thus divided into to great stems, out of which grow all the other branches of virtue.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Virtue has a secret dignity, even with those that ridicule it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
If virtue promises good fortune and tranquility and happiness, certainly also the progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things.
EPICTETUS
Discourses