Virtue Quotes - Page 20

• Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.

  John Adams

  Practice, Next, Popularity

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.57

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• Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men's minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this.

  Gautama Buddha

  Men, Thinking, Mind

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• Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.

  Lucan

  Wisdom, Wish, Politics

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• A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation.

  Daniel Webster

  Wisdom, War, Evil

  Daniel Webster, Edward Everett (1853). “Speeches in the convention to amend the constitution of Massachusetts ; Speeches in Congress”, p.394

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• Well the thing is, once you have a snow leopard it's difficult to go back. Everything is going to be slightly disappointing. It's very telling what your choice would be. Because that's probably how you see yourself. We used to play that game as kids and you'd say if you were animal what would you be and it'd usually be the opposite of what it should be. But all animals have got their virtues. You know, cockroaches got virtues.

  Daniel Craig

  Kids, Animal, Opposites

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• Monetary freedom (gold: sound money), like all other economic freedoms, clears the way for energy, intellect and virtue... Political control weakens individual self-reliance and energy, causes want and poverty and, in the end, breeds tyranny and oppression.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Self, Political, Gold

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• One of the regrets of my life is that I did not study Latin. I'm absolutely convinced, the more I understand these eighteenth-century people, that it was that grounding in Greek and Latin that gave them their sense of the classic virtues: the classic ideals of honor, virtue, the good society, and their historic examples of what they could try to live up to.

  David McCullough

  Regret, Latin, People

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

  Harry Frankfurt

  Liars, Lying, Opposites

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• I know truth is more like a mountain that has to be scaled. The peak of the mountain pierces the clouds and can only rarely be seen, and has never been reached. And what you see of it, moreover, depends upon the flank of the mountain you stand upon, and how exhausted getting even so far has made you. Virtue lies in looking upwards, toiling upwards, and sometimes joyously leaping from one precarious crag of fact and feeling to the next.

  Fay Weldon

  Lying, Clouds, Feelings

  Fay Weldon (2012). “The President’s Child”, p.6, HarperCollins UK

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• ...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.

  R. H. Tawney

  Mean, Political, Democracy

  R. H. Tawney (2016). “Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism”, p.166, Verso Books

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• Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, People, Tolerance

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• An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man the friend of truth the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there's another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this.

  Robert Burns

  Lying, Heart, Men

  Robert Burns (1871). “The complete poetical works of Robert Burns, arranged in the order of their earliest publication: (... by Scott Douglas)”, p.166

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• ... Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Birth, Crime, Force

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2012). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.91, JHU Press

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• Curb your talent lest it speed where virtue does not guide.

  Dante Alighieri

  Doe, Talent, Speed

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• Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue.

  Robert Wright

  Skills, Victory, Brain

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• Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.

  James Lee Burke

  Brave, Noble, Deeds

  James Lee Burke (2011). “The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel”, p.429, Simon and Schuster

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• Obedience is the only virtue that plants the other virtues in the heart and preserves them after they have been planted.

  Pope Gregory I

  Heart, Obedience, Plant

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• Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ease, Demand, Path

  'Essais' (1580) bk. 2, ch. 11

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• The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

  Robert Graves

  Art, Lying, Believe

  Robert Graves (1960). “Food for Centaurs: Stories, Talks, Critical Studies, Poems”

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• No people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery, but when they deserv'd it. ...The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought. ...If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.

  Samuel Adams

  People, Liberty, Yoke

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• The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.

  Max Weber

  Government, Defining, Action

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• As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.

  M. C. Escher

  Reality, World, Accepting

  "On Being a Graphic Artist" by M. C. Escher,

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• What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Dark, What Matters, Community

  Alasdair MacIntyre (1981). “After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory”, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd

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• A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue but the parent of all the other virtues.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Thank You, Thanksgiving, Thankful

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt,Oratio Pro Cnæo Plancio, XXXIII, p. 336-37, 1922.

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• Consistency is the foundation of virtue.

  Francis Bacon

  Consistency, Foundation

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