“There's a virtue in slowness, which we have lost”

— Graham Greene, book Monsignor Quixote

Monsignor Quixote (1982)

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Graham Greene164

English writer, playwright and literary critic 1904–1991

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)

“Let them recognize virtue and rot for having lost it.”
Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.

Persius (34–62) ancient latin poet

Satire III, line 38.
Alternate translation (by William Gifford):—
"In all her charms, set Virtue in their eye,
And let them see their loss, despair, and—die!"
The Satires

“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“For it falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“When love once pleas admission to our hearts,
(In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
The woman that deliberates is lost.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
Variant: "When love once pleads admission to our hearts..."

Act IV, scene i. The last line has often been misreported as "He who hesitates is lost", a sentiment inspired by it but not penned by Addison. See Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 3.

“We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.”

Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825–1868) Canadian politician

Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term. (Hear, hear.)