Virtue Quotes - Page 23

• The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Overcoming, Faces

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• The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Patriotism, Noble, Liable

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.8, Hayes Barton Press

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• If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Marriage, Giving, Lust

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• When I was a child . . . Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Intellect, Expenses

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.120, Routledge

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• Faith has this excellency, that it is able to bring life out of death, light out of darkness. It has a kind of creating virtue.

  Jeremiah Burroughs

  Creating, Light, Darkness

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• Virtue and integrity are necessary for genuine happiness. Guard your integrity with care.

  Jack Kornfield

  Integrity, Care, Genuine Happiness

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• Personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Political, Substitutes, Hard

  Margaret Thatcher (1995). “The path to power”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• It ill becomes any of us to take the attitude that all evidence for God is false evidence, beneath consideration, simply by virtue of its being evidence for God, or even by virtue of its being outside the purview of science.

  Kitty Ferguson

  Attitude, Consideration, Evidence

  Kitty Ferguson (1997). “The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God”, Eerdmans Publishing Company

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• The virtues prized in free countries are honesty, self-discipline, a sense of responsibility to one's family, a sense of loyalty to one's employer and staff, and a pride in the quality of one's work. And these virtues only flourish in a climate of freedom.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Loyalty, Country, Honesty

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• If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

  Michael Kinsley

  Hypocrisy, Vices, Pay

  Michael Kinsley (2008). “Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries”, p.194, W. W. Norton & Company

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• How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!

  Marquis de Sade

  Heart, Young, Semblance

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• We are told that Sin consists in acting contrary to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. . . . This leads to frightful results. . . . The British State considers it the duty of an Englishman to kill people who are not English whenever a collection of elderly gentlemen in Westminster tells him to do so. . . . Church and State are placable enemies of both intelligence and virtue.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, People, Gentleman

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• Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.

  Jane Austen

  Dance, Believe, Dancing

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.929, Wordsworth Editions

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• The virtual community? The word virtual does not mean "virtue." It means "not." When I go to the store and they say: The shirt that you brought in is virtually done. It means it is not done, in the same way that the virtual community is not a community. There is no commitment there. When you log off, you are not a member of it anymore. My flesh and blood community, the sense of knowing my neighbor, knowing the guy across the street, having dinner with the people down the block, getting along with each other and making compromises, that's a genuine community with a commitment.

  Clifford Stoll

  Block, Mean, Commitment

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• The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.

  William Godwin

  Capacity, Application, Humans

  William Godwin (1793). “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness”, p.309

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• Every nation-state tends towards the imperial - that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police, propaganda, courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Army, Order, Law

  Daniel Berrigan (2009). “The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation”, p.22, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Modesty isn't always a virtue; it can be a hindrance; a careful measure of personal pride builds confidence and ensures success.

  Wayne Gerard Trotman

  Pride, Modesty, Careful

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• It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Essence, Done, Rewards

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.374, Macmillan

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• The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Progress, Interest, Compounds

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.4567, Delphi Classics

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• Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge - a common understanding - likemindedness as the sociologists say.

  John Dewey

  Communication, Men, Order

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• The Cross is a gibbet - rather an odd thing to make use of as a talisman against bad luck, if that is how we regard it. Or is it, instead, a cynical reminder that Virtue usually gets pilloried whenever it makes one of its occasional appearances in this world?

  Denis Johnston

  Cynical, Luck, Odd Things

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• To be good Christians you have to contemplate the suffering humanity of Jesus. "How can we bear witness? Contemplate Jesus. How can we forgive? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we not hate our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we avoid gossiping about our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. There is no other way". These virtues are the those of the Father, who forgives us always, and Our Lady, Our Mother, shares in these virtues too.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Mother, Jesus

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• What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?

  Alan Alda

  Thinking, Names, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.

  John Updike

  Beautiful, Opportunity, Treasure

  "More Matter" by John Updike, www.nytimes.com. 1999.

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• Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

  John Adams

  Christian, Men, Numbers

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1969). “The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government”

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