quotations about virtue
Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
God hath not called us that we should be unclean, but holy and virtuous.
THOMAS BECON
Writings of the Rev. Thomas Becon
Virtue seeks the greatest distance from vice.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
ANDRE GIDE
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
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 happy life was related to virtue, and virtue itself was not to be seen merely as an individualistic good but something which must be seen as a social good.
HENRY KARLSON
"Virtue is Social", Patheos, April 5, 2017
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
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
Our virtues are usually just vices in disguise.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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
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
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
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
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
He is ill clothed that is bare of virtue.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733
Conduciveness to happiness being then the test of virtue, and all happiness being composed of our own happiness and that of others, the production of our own happiness is prudence, the production of the happiness of others is effective benevolence. The tree of virtue is thus divided into to great stems, out of which grow all the other branches of virtue.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
Men sometimes profess attachment to particular virtues, that they may be esteemed free of their opposite vices; and accuse others of what they themselves are guilty, that innocence may be conjectured from desire of justice.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections