quotations about virtue
Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
The narrowest path
Is always the holiest
DEPECHE MODE
"Judas"
Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The most precious treasure is virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
The noblest gain from virtue springs,
And virtue joy unending brings.
VALMIKI
The Ramayan
The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
The habit of virtue is a fire-drill in a school which leads confused children through smoke to safety.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Virtue wears well in any garb.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The great reason why false virtues pass so well in the world is, that true ones are so seldom near to compare them with.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Most of our virtues are gouty from lack of exercise.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
While bars and bolts may baffle the thief, virtue alone will defeat the slanderer.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Aurora
Every deed of dishonor, every victim of vice, every ghastly spectacle of crime, is an eloquent testimony to the need and the worth of virtue.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.
CONFUCIUS
The Doctrine of the Mean
Overt and apparent virtues, bring forth praise; but there be secret and hidden virtues, that bring forth fortune; certain deliveries of a man's self, which have no name.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Fortune", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword.
BRET HARTE
"The Legends of the Rhine"