Virtue Quotes - Page 31

• Virtue has needs of limits.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Needs, Limits

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• ..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Different, Praise

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical”, p.505

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• ... it is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind.... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas.

  Alice Foote MacDougall

  Spiritual, Lonely, Business

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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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• There are people who...tell you that the light in your heart is a weakness. Don't believe it! It's an old tactic of cruel people to kill kindness in the name of virtue.

  John Patrick Shanley

  Kindness, Believe, Heart

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• Whether we immoralists do any harm to virtue?-Just as little as anarchists do to princes. It is only because they have been shot at that they once again sit securely on their thrones. Moral: we must shoot at morals.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Thrones, Littles, Moral

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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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• 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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• You implanted your highest goal into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Passion, Heart, Goal

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2015). “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, p.36, Booklassic

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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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• Lord of the golden tongue and smiting eyes; Great out of season and untimely wise: A man whose virtue, genius, grandeur, worth, Wrought deadlier ill than ages can undo.

  William Watson

  Wise, Character, Eye

  William Watson (1936). “The Poems of Sir William Watson: 1878-1935”

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• Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are virtues of the superior general.

  Sun Tzu

  Distance, Enemy, Victory

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• The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.

  John Stuart Mill

  Together, Kind, Cases

  John Stuart Mill (2012). “The Subjection of Women”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.

  Mark Twain

  Ink, Machines, May

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• I believe that I am God's exact intention. It's that balance of virtue and vice.

  Cee Lo Green

  Believe, Balance, Vices

  "Cee Lo is water and a wig-wearing 'closet freak' on solo debut" by Shaheem Reid, www.mtv.com. April 18, 2002.

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• Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil.
  Are empty trunks o'erflourished by the devil.

  William Shakespeare

  Beauty, Evil, Hypocrisy

  William Shakespeare (2016). “Twelfth Night”, p.68, Penguin

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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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• So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Vanity, Law

  Samuel Johnson (1809). “The Rambler”, p.114

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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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