Moral Excellence Quotes

What more valuable than Gold? Diamonds. Than Diamonds? Virtue.

There is no quality I would rather have, and be thought to have, than gratitude. For it is not only the greatest virtue, but is the mother of all the rest.

Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme virtue, which will be the virtueof the best thing.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty.

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

In seasons of tumult and discord bad men have most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness.

What is good work? You just know it when you see it. You just can't explain it.

Wisdom and courage make mutual contributions to greatness.

Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.

Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, or even to be simply honest. He is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surmount the vulgarity of almost everybody.

Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.

The superior man... does not set his mind either for or against anything, he will pursue whatever is right. The superior man thinks of virtue, the common man of comfort.

I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue would esteem nothing above it.

Grace is the mother and nurse of holiness, and not the apologist of sin.

That man is good who does good to others; if he suffers on account of the good he does, he is very good; if he suffers at the hands of those to whom he has done good, then his goodness is so great that it could be enhanced only by greater sufferings; and if he should die at their hands, his virtue can go no further: it is heroic, it is perfect.

To be good is noble but to show others how to be good is nobler.

Riches are first to be sought for; after wealth, virtue.