quotations about virtue
Virtue is also power. As we faithfully live the gospel, we will have power to be virtuous in every thought, feeling and action. Our minds become more receptive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost and the Light of Christ. We embody Christ not only in what we say and do, but in who we are.
ROBERT D. HALES
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"Becoming a Disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ", Deseret News, April 1, 2016
Our virtues are usually just vices in disguise.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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
God hath not called us that we should be unclean, but holy and virtuous.
THOMAS BECON
Writings of the Rev. Thomas Becon
He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther and try to plant a virtue in its place, otherwise he will have his labour to renew; a strong soil that has produced weeds, may be made to produce wheat, with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Any one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and aspiration after virtue; but he who maintains vice in theory, has not even the idea or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err: fiends only mock at goodness.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
It turns out that being "a paragon of big-banker virtue" is not at all the same as being a virtuous human being.
JIM HIGHTOWER
"How can we stop banksters from robbing us?", Illinois Times, April 20, 2017
Freedom that rejects virtue is really enslavement. Freedom from virtue is self-defeating, no matter how appealing it may appear when it is marketed.
DONALD DEMARCO
"A Modest Proposal for an Immodest Culture", National Catholic Register, April 22, 2017
If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness--to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Virtue is always in progress and yet always starts from the beginning. It is always in progress because, considered objectively, it is an ideal and unattainable, while yet constant approximation to it is a duty.
IMMANUEL KANT
Kant: The Metaphysics of Morals
The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
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
Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
Virtue is the effort, the conquest of a difficulty, leaving, as its results, a balance of happiness. There may be, there is much good in the world, which no virtue has been concerned in producing. But there is no virtue where there is no balance of happiness.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Personal Merit", Les Caractères
Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Some people have an idea that virtue exists only where the blood is cold.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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
If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour Himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Martin Van Buren, June 29, 1824
If there's a power above us,
(And that there is all nature cries aloud
Through all her works) he must delight in virtue.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato