Virtue Quotes

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

While property continues to be pretty equally divided, and a considerable share of information pervades the community, the tendency of people’s suffrage will be to elevate merit even from obscurity. As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in greater degree considered only as a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

I would rather have honesty and character than prestige and wealth. I can walk and ride the streets of this city, hold my head up, and look all men in the face.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

A handful of righteous warriors can prevail over hordes.

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.

When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity. The Honourable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honourable murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a monster rather than a man. Virtue is inflamed at the violation, and sober reason calls it nonsense.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

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

An honest man is always a child.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice’.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

Courage is the most important of the virtues because it is the one that makes all the others possible.

Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.

It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.

The right actions undertaken for the right reasons generally lead to good outcomes over time.