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Virtue Quotes

Browse 5982 quotes about Virtue.

Virtue Quotes

“Suffering... We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.”

Giving Suffering Values Literature Courage Virtue Depression Pity Self Pity

Author:Anatole France

“Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility. Learn to value yourself, which means: to FIGHT for your happiness, and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.”

Men Mean Values Fighting Virtue Humility Pride Self Love Vices Protective Rags Value Yourself

Author:John Galt

“Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.”

Men Has Beens Matter Values Choices Animal Practice Virtue Morality Offers Accepted Rational Alternatives Code Rationality Suicidal

Author:John Galt

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Source: The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation

“Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.”

Needs Values Grows Class Virtue Rich Exercise Labor Dignity Importance Idle Eloquent Thrift Harps

Author:Oscar Wilde

“Virtue is not a chemical product...it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key.”

Ifs Mean Care Values Literature Lost Language Virtue Products Keys Morality Cease Chemicals Meaningless Historic Transmit

Author:Lewis Mumford

“Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.”

People Doe Values Growth Liberty Sun Virtue Morality Relation Sake Weed Temperance

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.”

May Real Values Cases Virtue Subjects Gold Breaths Constant Atmosphere Currency Finest Obscure Exposure Slander Brightness Real Value

Book:L.P.

Source: L.P.

“Any system of economics is bankrupt if it sees either value or virtue in unemployment.”

Ifs Values Virtue Economics Unemployment

Author:Jimmy Carter

“Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.”

“The virtue of Yankee upbringing spiritually speaking is of more downright value to me than any past heritages.”

Past Values Virtue Heritage Yankees Upbringing

Author:Marsden Hartley

“Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.”

“In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.”

Persons Stills Values Lost Virtue Honor Mark Titles Merit Attributes Founders Stamps Grandeur Ancestry Descendants Denominations Intrinsic Value Great Family

Book:The spectator

Source: The spectator

“Like language, a code of manners can be used with more or less skill, for laudable or for evil purposes, to express a great variety of ideas and emotions. In itself, it carries no moral value, but ignorance in use of this tool is not a sign of virtue.”

Ideas Use Used Purpose Values Evil Language Emotion Moral Virtue Ignorance Skills Tools Variety Manners Code Carrie Moral Values

Book:Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson

Source: Common courtesy: in which Miss Manners solves the problem that baffled Mr. Jefferson

“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?”

Important Earth Values Virtue Sacrifice Son Fortune Rewards Genuine Ignorant Portions Mistress Celestial Recompense

Book:Selected essays

Source: Selected essays

“In moments of spiritual crisis we naturally fall back upon what worked for us, or seemed to work, heretofore. Sometimes this shows up through the reassertion of our old values in belligerent, testy ways. Regression of any kind is just such a return to old presumptions, often after they have been shown to be insufficient for the complexity of larger questions. The virtue of the old presumptions is that they once worked, or seemed to work, and therein lies if not certainty, then nostalgia for a previous, presumptive security. In our private lives, we frequently fall back upon our old roles.”

Source: What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

“Silver is of less value than gold, gold than virtue.”

Values Virtue Gold Silver

Author:Horace

“The shudder of awe is humanity's highest faculty, Even though this world is forever altering its values.”

World Values Humanity Forever Virtue This World Highest Awe Faculty

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There are many virtues in books, but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories.”

Book Facts Values Virtue Records Essentials Intuition Formulas

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

“What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.”

Ends Values Virtue Modern Mankind Materials Standards Constant Advertising Appeals Material Things Elevating Standards And Values

Book:Singing Waters

Source: Singing Waters

“We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute. And I used the term 'conditional' to express that which is indispensable, and 'absolute' to express that which is good in itself.”

Ifs Said Used Values Term Perfect Virtue Exercise Ethics Argument Absolutes Realization Indispensable Conditional

Book:The Essential Aristotle

Source: The Essential Aristotle

“The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight.”

Source: Public and private papers

“Don't sell out your virtue and your value for something you think you want. Judas got the money, but he threw it all away and hung himself because he was so unhappy with himself.”

Thinking Want Values Virtue Sells Unhappy Aspiration Hung Judas Unhappy People

Author:Jim Rohn

“Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.”

Thinking Men Way Wells Character Values Common Acting Steps Support Virtue Honest Goodness Charity Generosity Common Life

Author:Laurence Sterne

“Everything depends on the value we give to things. We are the ones who make morality and virtue. The cannibal who eats his neighbor is as innocent as the child who sucks his barley-sugar.”

Giving Children Values Virtue Depends Morality Neighbor Innocent Sugar Cannibal Barley

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.”

Men Wells May Values Order Force Pleasure Boys Virtue Exercise Difficulty Innocent Height Subtle Utility Facility

Book:Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c

Source: Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c

“If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.”

“Virtue hath no virtue if it be not impugned; then appeareth how great it is, of what value and power it is, when by patience it approveth what it works.”

Ifs Values Virtue

Author:Seneca the Younger

“Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.”

Source: Famous American plays of the 1920s and the 1930s

“It is easy enough to say, Be true to your values. But what if your values are irrational? Or what if the virtues you have committed yourself to are so much against human nature that they cannot be practiced consistently? Be careful of what you accept as your code of morality. Think carefully about whether its tenets serve your life and well being. Exercise critical judgment. Realize how much is at stake-your life, your happiness, your self-esteem.”

“We underestimate the value of patience. It is possible that people might sometimes interrupt our meditation sessions or Dharma study, but they can never take away our opportunity to train in inner virtues such as patience. It is this mental training, rather than outer virtuous activities, that is the essence of Dharma practice.”

People Sometimes Might Values Opportunity Practice Virtue Study Meditation Activity Training Essence Train Virtuous Underestimate Session Dharma

Author:Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

“Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless.”

Reason Moments Values Virtue Logic Method Silent Intuition Propositions Worthless Unfolding Procession

Book:Essays and Lectures

Source: Essays and Lectures

“The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. "Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true ... pure ... if there be any virtue ... think on these things." Thus, the follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly.”

People Ifs Thinking Men World Mind Heart Ideas Values Jesus Christ Church Sin Virtue Pure Lays Supreme Followers Gravity Thoughts On Life Solomon A Man Thinketh

Author:Ravi Zacharias

“It was with the Industrial Revolution, as society plunged ever more eagerly into the conquest of material riches and bent all its energies to the accumulation of goods, that material poverty became a major problem. Obviously, this meant abandonment or downgrading of spiritual values, virtue, etc. To share or not to share in the increase of the collective wealth-this was the Number One question. It was the desire to acquire wealth that prompted the poor to start fighting.”

“Great learning and superior abilities...will be of little value and small estimation unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.”

Littles Values Ability Virtue Honor Integrity Superiors Estimation

Author:Abigail Adams