Explore Quotes on Virtue

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Blushing is the colour of virtue.

We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack.

Tart, cathartic virtue.

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

"I pay my taxes," says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.

Creating without claiming, Doing without taking credit, Guiding without interfering, This is Primal Virtue.

If your virtue is especially radiant, it can be possible to open a pathway to the subtle realm and receive these celestial teachings directly from the immortals.

Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide,- In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too near that comes to be denied.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.

Or if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

Minds that are great and free, should not on fortune pause: 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.