quotations about virtue
The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Some people have an idea that virtue exists only where the blood is cold.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Virtue is like precious odors -- most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Adversity", Essays
Men sometimes profess attachment to particular virtues, that they may be esteemed free of their opposite vices; and accuse others of what they themselves are guilty, that innocence may be conjectured from desire of justice.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
If virtue holds the secret, don't defer;
Be off with pleasure, and be on with her.
HORACE
Epistles
Virtue has a secret dignity, even with those that ridicule it.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men's minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another's virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Envy", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
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
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
If virtue promises good fortune and tranquility and happiness, certainly also the progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
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
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
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
Virtue only is the true beauty.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
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
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
Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
We look around us ... we find that we exist, we find ourselves reasoning upon the mystery which involves our being ... we see virtue and vice, we see the light and darkness, each is separate, distinct; the line which divides them is glaringly perceptible; yet how racking it is to the soul, when enquiring into its own operations, to find that perfect virtue is very far from attainable, to find reason tainted by feeling, to see the mind when analysed exhibit a picture of irreconcilable inconsistencies, even when perhaps a moment before, it imagined that it had grasped the fleeting Phantom of virtue.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, June 20, 1811