Virtue Quotes - Page 11

• The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

  Aristotle

  Life, Success, Philosophical

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• The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

  Jane Porter

  Temptation, Religion, May

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.21

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• Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.

  William Wycherley

  Pride, Giving, Charity

  William Wycherley (1849). “The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. With Biographical and Critical Notices by Leigh Hunt. A New Edition”, p.19

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• True virtue, when she errs, needs not the eyes of men to excite her blushes; she is confounded at her own presence, and covered with confusion of face.

  Jane Porter

  Eye, Men, Confusion

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.18

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• Virtue, vain word, futile shadow, slave of chance! Alas! I believe in thee!

  Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger

  Believe, Shadow, Chance

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• No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Perfect, Courses, Dies

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (2005). “Tusculan Disputations: On the Nature of Gods, and the Commonwealth”, p.58, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Most virtue lies between two vices.

  Horace

  Lying, Two, Vices

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• Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her.

  Owen Feltham

  Misery, Kind, Fame

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• I cannot worship the abstractions of virtue: she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Spring, Heart, Addresses

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• The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.

  Laurence Sterne

  Tickets, Chance, Lottery

  Laurence Sterne (1795). “The Works of Laurence Sterne, A.M. In Eight Volumes ..”, p.113

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• The virtuous to those mansions go
  Where pleasures unembitter'd flow,
  Where, leading up a jocund band,
  Vigor and Youth dance hand in hand,
  Whilst Zephyr, with harmonious gales,
  Pipes softest music through the vales,
  And Spring and Flora, gaily crown'd,
  With velvet carpet spread the ground;
  With livelier blush where roses bloom,
  And every shrub expires perfume.

  Charles Churchill

  Spring, Hands, Rose

  Charles Churchill (1762). “The Ghost”, p.38

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• Virtues go ever in troops; they go so thick, that sometimes some are hid in the crowd; which yet are, but appear not.

  Joseph Hall

  Troops, Crowds, Sometimes

  Joseph Hall, Josiah Pratt (1808). “The Works: Now First Collected : with Some Account of His Life and Sufferings. Devotional works”, p.83

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• It would not be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christ, Easy, Abstract

  John Stuart Mill (1874). “Three Essays on Religion”, p.255, New York : H. Holt

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• Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue.

  Joseph Joubert

  Two, Vices, Lovable

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• Our virtues, as well as our vices, are often scourges for our own backs.

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Vices, Wells, Scourge

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1881). “Asphodel, by the author of 'Lady Audley's secret'.”

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• Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.

  Owen Feltham

  Rivers, Rowing, Streams

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• There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Play, Heaven

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• That which leads us to the performance of duty by offering pleasure as its reward, is not virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue.
  [Lat., Nam quae voluptate, quasi mercede aliqua, ad officium impellitur, ea non est virtus sed fallax imitatio simulatioque virtutis.]

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Offering, Rewards, Imitation

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• The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.

  David Hume

  Age, Spirit

  David Hume (1870). “Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political”, p.20

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• Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?

  David Hume

  Son, Sacrifice, Ignorant

  David Hume, Stephen Copley, Andrew Edgar (2008). “Selected Essays”, p.90, Oxford University Press

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• No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue.

  Theodore Parker

  Long, Hopeful, Despair

  Theodore Parker (1865). “Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Man”, p.39

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• It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.

  Joseph Addison

  Mind, Affection

  Joseph Addison (1721). “The Spectator, no. 90-505”, p.611

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• Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Art, Ideas, Musician

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• We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Conditions

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 611, 1895.

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• Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind.

  John Dryden

  Atheist, Vices, Triumph

  John Dryden (1998). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI: Plays: King Arthur, Cleomenes, Love Triumphant, and The Secular Masque and Other Contributions to The Pilgrim”, p.145, Univ of California Press

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