“The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen.
"I did not know that I was a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?"
"Because of her ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue."”
Source: Epigrams, p. 358
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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914Related quotes

On his wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon
Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)
Context: She was unusual because even though I knew her family was as poor as ours, nothing she said or did seemed touched by that. Or by prejudice. Or by anything the world said or did. It was as if she had something inside her that somehow made all that not count. I fell in love with her some the first time we ever talked, and a little bit more every time after that until I thought I couldn't love her more than I did. And when I felt that way, I asked her to marry me … and she said she would.

“The appearance of [Virtue] was far different: her hair, seeking no borrowed charm from ordered locks, grew freely above her forehead; her eyes were steady; in face and gait she was more like a man; she showed a cheerful modesty; and her tall stature was set off by the snow-white robe she wore.”
[Virtutis] dispar habitus: frons hirta nec umquam
composita mutata coma, stans vultus, et ore
incessuque viro propior laetique pudoris
celsa umeros niveae fulgebat stamine pallae.
Book XV, lines 28–31
Punica

“The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 207