Quotes about virtue (2023 quotes, page 10)

“My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Letter to his daughter Frances Scott Fitzgerald (July 1938)
Quoted, Letters

Courage

“Crime, like virtue, has its degrees;
And timid innocence was never known
To blossom suddenly into extreme license.”

Jean Racine Phèdre

Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses dégrés;
Et jamais on n'a vu la timide innocence
Passer subitement à l'extrême licence.
Hippolyte, act IV, scene II.
Phèdre (1677)

“I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

God , Way , Change , Time

“Some have made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Thomas Law (13 June 1814)
1810s

Love , Men , God , Support

“Not all men and women can devote themselves to those whom they respect. Some are jealous of superiority and are far more interested in revealing the faults than in imitating the virtues of a noble character. Others fear the option of a mind that is too lucid and prefer to be friends with someone less exacting.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Women , Men , Fear

““This is the stuff which some Nazis wished to put into our churches,” whispered von Bek. “Pagan objects of worship which they claim are the symbols of a true German religion. They are almost as anti-Christian as they are anti-Semitic. It is as if they hate every system of thought which in any way questions their own mish-mash of pseudo-philosophy and mystical claptrap!” He stared at the altar in disgust. “They are the worst kind of nihilists. They cannot even see that they destroy everything and create nothing. Their invention is as empty as any inventions of Chaos I have seen. It has no true history, no concrete substance, no depth, no quality of intellect. It is merely a negation, a brutal denial of all Germany’s virtues.””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3, Chapter 2 (p. 637)
The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Hate , Religion , Way , History

“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

September 17, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“Our high Father, God Almighty, which is Being, He knew and loved us from afore any time: of which knowing, in His marvellous deep charity and the foreseeing counsel of all the blessed Trinity, He willed that the Second Person should become our Mother. Our Father, our Mother worketh, our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirmeth: and therefore it belongeth to us to love our God in whom we have our being: Him reverently thanking and praising for our making, mightily praying to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our Lord the Holy Ghost for help and grace.
For in these three is all our life: Nature, Mercy, Grace: whereof we have meekness and mildness; patience and pity; and hating of sin and of wickedness, — for it belongeth properly to virtue to hate sin and wickedness. And thus is Jesus our Very Mother in Nature of our first making; and He is our Very Mother in Grace, by taking our nature made. All the fair working, and all the sweet natural office of dearworthy Motherhood is impropriated to the Second Person: for in Him we have this Godly Will whole and safe without end, both in Nature and in Grace, of His own proper Goodness.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 59

Love , Life , God , Hate

“For Fascists, the state, animated by a profound sense of unity, was understood to be the ‘educator of civic virtue, rendering citizens conscious of their historic mission.’ Italy was to be Fascist, and Fascism was to be Italy. The nation was to be one indissoluble union; the interest of each was to be the interest of all. By 1929, what had emerged from the Fascist revolution was an unmistakable variant of the Gentilean neo-Hegelian state.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, (2001), p. 62

Education , Sense , Animals

“Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, "Courage, my boy! that is the complexion of virtue."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

Youth , Boy , Courage

“Loveliest of women! heaven is in thy soul,
Beauty and virtue shine forever round thee,
Bright'ning each other! thou art all divine!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act III, scene ii.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Women , Beauty , Art , Soul

“Plato said that virtue has no master [Republic 617e]. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 15
Letters

Money , Personality

“If I were a young man
With my bones full of marrow,
Oh, if I were a bold young man
Straight as an arrow,
I'd store up no virtue
For Heaven's distant plain,
I'd live at ease as I did please
And sin once again.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Brittle Bones".
Country Sentiment (1920)

Distant

“To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society, Ch. III: Industry, Government, and War

Love , War , Courage

“You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?”

Anne Brontë book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), A Word to the Calvinists (1843)

Soul , Thinking , Heart , Happiness

“I assure you that I shall never cease to exert myself to the utmost in the cause of reform, and that I will never decline any office which may increase my power to effect it. I am nearly certain of being nominated to the office of Moderator in the year 1818-1819, and as I am an examiner in virtue of my office, for the next year I shall pursue a course even more decided than hitherto, since I shall feel that men have been prepared for the change, and will then be enabled to have acquired a better system by the publication of improved elementary books. I have considerable influence as a lecturer, and I will not neglect it. It is by silent perseverance only, that we can hope to reduce the many-headed monster of prejudice and make the University answer her character as the loving mother of good learning and science.”

George Peacock (1791–1858) Scottish mathematician

Letter to a friend (1817) discussing, as a representative of the Analytical Society, the use of the "French" differential notation, as opposed to the "English" or "Newtonian" dot notation, for mathematical analysis, in the examination of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. As quoted by Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century https://books.google.com/books?id=43SBAAAAIAAJ (1916)

Love , Men , Books , Hope

“There’s a point, around age twenty,” Bedap said, “when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 249)

Life , Age

“Gould's arguments on the quirkiness of human intelligence are not only presented as part of an evolutionary argument, but also I believe to buttress an ideological viewpoint. In brief, his assessment of Man as an evolutionary accident is to lead us into a libertarian attitude whereby, by virtue of a cosmic accident, we, and we alone, have no choice but to take responsibility for our own destiny and mould it to our desire.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Source: The Crucible of Creation (1998), p. 14.

Intelligence , Parting

“Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

On a fait une vertu de la modération pour borner l’ambition des grands hommes, et pour consoler les gens médiocres de leur peu de fortune, et de leur peu de mérite.
Maxim 308.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Men , People

“The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new element of his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, and a ruling power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human being sunk so low that he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise. Because God commands him to rise. it is certain that he ran rise. Every man has the power, and should use it, to make all situations, trials, and temptations instruments to promote his virtue and happiness; and is so far from being the creature of circumstances, 'that he creates and controls them, making them to be all that they are, of evil or of good, to him as a moral being.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 192

God , Nature , Evil , Happiness

“If you want to follow The Way of Men, if you want to advance a return to honor and manly virtue, if you want to steel yourself against an uncertain future—start a gang.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

How To Start A Gang
The Way of Men (2012)

Men , Way , Future

“Fight virtue's cause, stand up in wit's defence,
Win us from vice, and laugh us into sense.”

Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) English poet and man of letters

On the Prospect of Peace (1713), line 428.

Sense , Fight

“Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.”

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) French utopian socialist and philosopher

The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269

Wisdom , Fashion

“The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Variant: The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration: this may be called perfect virtue.
Source: The Analects, Other chapters

Business , Success

“When one is already happy it is important not to lose the virtues which have produced happiness. When they are successful, many men and women forget prudence, moderation, and kindness - qualities which were instrumental in their success. They are arrogant or thoughtless; an excessive self-confidence prevents them from accomplishing difficult tasks, and they soon become unworthy of their good fortune. They are surprised when their luck changes from good to bad. The ancient practice of sacrifice to the gods in return for happiness was a wise one. Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, threw his precious ring into the sea as a sacrifice, and there are several ways of throwing the ring of Polycrates into the sea. The simplest is to be modest.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Women , Men , God , Way

“Without some knowledge of Constitutional History it is absolutely impossible to do justice to the characters and positions of the actors in the great drama; absolutely impossible to understand the origin of parties, the development of principles, the growth of nations in spite of parties and in defiance of principles. It alone can teach why it is that in politics good men do not always think alike, that the worst cause has often been illustrated with the most heroic virtue, and that the world owes some of its greatest debts to men from whose very memory it recoils.”

William Stubbs (1825–1901) English historian and clergyman

The Constitutional History of England (1873-8; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903) vol. 1, pp. iii-iv.

Men , World , Justice , History

“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2005-05-23
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
season 3 episode 5
Holier Than Thou
Television
2000s, 2005

Faith

“This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 3, Ch. 1
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Life , Men , Law , Dependency

“The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,—to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend. With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,—and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,—that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth—that of Science—on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 19

Age , Way , Understanding , Freedom

“There is not a moral evil which has not its infallible antidote, nor any moral virtue which has not its spring and sustenance in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To apprehend Him with every faculty of the mind, and with every affection of the heart, and to grow daily in that apprehension, is to emerge from every thing that enthralls, to surmount all that can contaminate.”

Alexander Knox (1757–1831)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 96.

Spring , Evil , Heart , Christ

“The chief good he has defined to be the exercise of virtue in a perfect life.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 13.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Life , Exercises , Perfection

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

Love , Life , Men , God

“Our intent for this gathering was to protest some of the plans by members of the Parliament which are targeting women’s bodies and psyche. Plans such as the ‘Plan on Protection of Promoters of Virtue and Preventers of Vice’ and the ‘Plan to Protect Chastity and Hijab’ have issues and vocabulary that may be abused in the Iranian society and turned into excuses for violence”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

against women
About the 2014 protest on the acid attacks on women in Isfahan. As quoted in Protesters Deploring Acid Attacks against Women Are Beaten and Arrested https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2014/10/protesters-acid-attacks/?_sm_au_=iVVj7fBvFSWnQjmQ (October 24, 2014), Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Women

“Explain it,” Hamilton muttered. “This place—this bar. Why doesn’t God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—”
“This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That’s the trouble with you atheists; you don’t grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you’re one of the Faithful, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Opportunist.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Bet your sweet soul.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 5 (p. 66)

Life , God , World , Faith

“Do not discuss God and virtue. Do not discuss the homeland and its history. Do not discuss the authority and prestige. Do not discuss the family and its moral. Not discuss the glory of work and their duty.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Salazar: Biographical Study - page 368; of Franco Nogueira - Published by Atlantis Publishing, 1977

God , Family , History

“For the fame of riches and beauty is fickle and frail, while virtue is eternally excellent.”
Nam divitiarum et formae gloria fluxa atque fragilis est, virtus clara aeternaque habetur.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

For the glory of wealth and beauty is fleeting and perishable; that of the mind is illustrious and immortal.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter I; Variant translation:

Beauty

“Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Edward Everett, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 352.

Success

“Everyone knew that democracy-direct rule by all the people-required such spartan, sel denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter III, POWER AND LIBERTY A THEORY OF POLITICS, p. 65.

People , Behavior , Democracy , Parting

“I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;
though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed
by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.
I like to name that flame which burns within me God!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God , Hate , Food , Drink

“Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 12 : Of Physiognomy
Essais (1595), Book III

God , Faith , Hope , Suffering

“We document, explain, justify, construct, organize: these are good things, but we do not succeed in coming to the whole... But we may as well calm down: construction is not absolute. Our virtue is this: by cultivating the exact we have laid the foundations for a science of art, including the unknown X.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Statement of 1917; as quoted in Teaching at the Bauhaus (2000) by Rainer Wick and Gabriele Diana Grawe, p. 231
1916 - 1920

Art , Science

“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Sand and Foam (1926)

Men , Loneliness

“Modern religious teachings have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Life

“As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 540.

Men , Truth , Faith , Religion

“All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing. Scientific intellect thinks here in terms of natural laws of necessary causality; mythico-poetic imagination perceives an organic, living connection; philosophic reason contemplates an absolute One. But on a more essential level, a system of circuminsession has to be seen here, according to which, on the field of Śūnyatā, all things are in a process of becoming master and servant to one another. In this system, each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its being is illusion in its truth and truth in its illusion. This may sound strange the first time one hears it, but in fact it enables us for the first time to conceive of a force by virtue of which all things are gathered together and brought into relationship with one another, a force which, since ancient times, has gone by the name of "nature"”

Keiji Nishitani book Religion and Nothingness

physis
Source: Religion and Nothingness (1983), p. 149

Truth , World , Law , Way

“The Catholic Church’s job is to call people to sanctity and to equip them for living saintly lives. Its mission is not to produce nice people, or people with hearts of gold, or people with good intentions; its mission is to produce saints, people of heroic virtue…To dial down the demands because they are hard, and most people have a hard time realizing them, is to compromise the very meaning and purpose of the Church. However, here’s the flip side. The Catholic Church couples its extraordinary moral demand with an extraordinarily lenient penitential system. The Church mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Barron, Bishop Robert. To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age (p. 78). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

God , People , Forgiveness , Understanding

“Mathematics is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to Human Affairs. In which last Respect, we may be said to receive from the Mathematics, the principal Delights of Life, Securities of Health, Increase of Fortune, and Conveniences of Labour: That we dwell elegantly and commodiously, build decent Houses for ourselves, erect stately Temples to God, and leave wonderful Monuments to Posterity: That we are protected by those Rampires from the Incursions of the Enemy; rightly use Arms, skillfully range an Army, and manage War by Art, and not by the Madness of wild Beasts: That we have safe Traffick through the deceitful Billows, pass in a direct Road through the tractless Ways of the Sea, and come to the designed Ports by the uncertain Impulse of the Winds: That we rightly cast up our Accounts, do Business expeditiously, dispose, tabulate, and calculate scattered 248 Ranks of Numbers, and easily compute them, though expressive of huge Heaps of Sand, nay immense Hills of Atoms: That we make pacifick Separations of the Bounds of Lands, examine the Moments of Weights in an equal Balance, and distribute every one his own by a just Measure: That with a light Touch we thrust forward vast Bodies which way we will, and stop a huge Resistance with a very small Force: That we accurately delineate the Face of this Earthly Orb, and subject the Oeconomy of the Universe to our Sight: That we aptly digest the flowing Series of Time, distinguish what is acted by due Intervals, rightly account and discern the various Returns of the Seasons, the stated Periods of Years and Months, the alternate Increments of Days and Nights, the doubtful Limits of Light and Shadow, and the exact Differences of Hours and Minutes: That we derive the subtle Virtue of the Solar Rays to our Uses, infinitely extend the Sphere of Sight, enlarge the near Appearances of Things, bring to Hand Things remote, discover Things hidden, search Nature out of her Concealments, and unfold her dark Mysteries: That we delight our Eyes with beautiful Images, cunningly imitate the Devices and portray the Works of Nature; imitate did I say? nay excel, while we form to ourselves Things not in being, exhibit Things absent, and represent Things past: That we recreate our Minds and delight our Ears with melodious Sounds, attemperate the inconstant Undulations of the Air to musical Tunes, add a pleasant Voice to a sapless Log and draw a sweet Eloquence from a rigid Metal; celebrate our Maker with an harmonious Praise, and not unaptly imitate the blessed Choirs of Heaven: That we approach and examine the inaccessible Seats of the Clouds, the distant Tracts of Land, unfrequented Paths of the Sea; lofty Tops of the Mountains, low Bottoms of the Valleys, and deep Gulphs of the Ocean: That in Heart we advance to the Saints themselves above, yea draw them to us, scale the etherial Towers, freely range through the celestial Fields, measure the Magnitudes, and determine the Interstices of the Stars, prescribe inviolable Laws to the Heavens themselves, and confine the wandering Circuits of the Stars within fixed Bounds: Lastly, that we comprehend the vast Fabrick of the Universe, admire and contemplate the wonderful Beauty of the Divine 249 Workmanship, and to learn the incredible Force and Sagacity of our own Minds, by certain Experiments, and to acknowledge the Blessings of Heaven with pious Affection.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 27-30

Life , God , War , Health

“Perfect is the virtue which is according to the Mean! Rare have they long been among the people, who could practice it!”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

People , Perfection

“We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,—not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue’s other and more precise name.”

John Erskine (1879–1951) American educator

Source: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), pp. 26-27

Love , Life , God , Intelligence

“The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Le législateur commande à l’avenir; il ne lui sert de rien d’être faible: c’est à lui de vouloir le bien et de le perpétuer; c’est à lui de rendre les hommes ce qu’il veut qu’ils soient: selon que les lois animent le corps social, inerte par lui-même, il en résulte les vertus ou les crimes, les bonnes mœurs ou la férocité.
Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_constitution_24_04_93.htm, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).

Law , Future

“"With these victories to which you refer, the Confederate States do seem to have retrieved their falling fortunes," Lord Lyons said. "I have no reason to doubt that Her Majesty's government will soon recognize that fact." "Thank you, your excellency," Lee said quietly. Even had Lincoln refused to give up the war- not impossible, with the Mississippi valley and many coastal pockets held by virtue of Northern naval power and hence relatively secure from rebel AK-47s- recognition by the greatest empire on earth would have assured Confederate independence. Lord Lyons held up a hand. "Many among our upper classes will be glad enough to welcome you to the family of nations, both as a result of your successful fight for self-government and because you have given a black eye to the often vulgar democracy of the United States. Others, however, will judge your republic a sham, with its freedom for white men based upon Negro slavery, a notion loathsome to the civilized world. I should be less than candid if I failed to number myself among that latter group." "Slavery was not the reason the Southern states chose to leave the Union," Lee said. He was aware he sounded uncomfortable, but went on, "We sought only to enjoy the sovereignty guaranteed us under the constitution, a right the North wrongly denied us. Our watchword all along has been, we wish but to be left alone."”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 182-183

Men , War , World , Family

“The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in the felicity of lighting on good education.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children
Variant: The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

Lie , Education , Spring , Light

“No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.”

Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) French philosopher

Source: De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties (1758), p. 21

“Ah, if men were those superior beings that the utopians of authority like to speak to us of, if we could close our eyes to reality, and live, like them, in a world of dreams and illusions as to the superiority of those who think themselves called to power, perhaps we also should do like them; perhaps we also should believe in the virtues of those who govern.
With virtuous masters, what dangers could slavery offer? Do you remember the Slave-owner of whom we heard so often, hardly thirty years ago? Was he not supposed to take paternal care of his slaves? "He alone," we were told, "could hinder these lazy, indolent, improvident children dying of hunger. How could he crush his slaves through hard labor, or mutilate them by blows, when his own interest lay in feeding them well, in taking care of them as much as of his own children! And then, did not 'the law' see to it that the least swerving of a slave-owner from the path of duty was punished?" How many times have we not been told so! But the reality was such that, having returned from a voyage to Brazil, Darwin was haunted all his life by the cries of agony of mutilated slaves, by the sobs of moaning women whose fingers were crushed in thumbscrews!”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Life , Women , Men , Hunger

“[the foreign Muslims (or Turks)] “alone are capable of virtue, kindness, generosity, valour, good deed, good works, truthfulness, keeping of promises… loyalty, clarity of vision, justice, equity, recognition of rights, gratitude for favours and fear of God. They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups, alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government… Owing to their actions the government of the king is strengthened and adorned.” [On the other hand the] “low-born” (Indian) Muslims are capable only of vices - immodesty, falsehood, miserliness, misappropriation, wrongfulness, lies, evil-speaking ingratitude,…shamelessness, impundence… [So they are called] low-born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth”.”

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Chapter 2.
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

God , People , Truth , Fear

“The nobler orders of being, including man himself, were contemplated from the first, and came into existence by virtue of a law, the operation of which had commenced ages before their forms were realized.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 250

Age , Law

“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Introduction

World , Way , Idea , Question

“No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Speech to a joint session of the US Congress (12 March 1947), outlining what became known as The Truman Doctrine

Democracy , Perfection

“George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone. He once wrote, "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." President Washington believed that the success of our democracy would also depend on the virtue of our citizens. In his farewell address to the American people, he said, "Morality is a necessary spring of popular government." Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first President. His example guided us in his time; it guides us in our time, and it will guide us for all time.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

President Bush Visits Mount Vernon, Honors President Washington's 275th Birthday on President's Day http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070219.html (February 19, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Life , War , People , World

“The way of Socrates had shown itself to be a limited way because it concerned itself “only with the scientific investigation of justice and the virtues,” and it had shown itself to be an intransigent way because it chose “non-conformity and death.” Plato corrected the way of Socrates—he removed the limitation and tempered its intransigence.”

Laurence Lampert (1941) American academic

Source: Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (1996), p. 16-17

Death , Justice , Way

“It is known that afore miracles come sorrow and anguish and tribulation; and that is for that we should know our own feebleness and our mischiefs that we are fallen in by sin, to meeken us and make us to dread God and cry for help and grace. Miracles come after that, and they come of the high Might, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, shewing His virtue and the joys of Heaven so far at it may be in this passing life: and that to strengthen our faith and to increase our hope, in charity. Wherefore it pleaseth Him to be known and worshipped in miracles. Then signifieth He thus: He willeth that we be not borne over low for sorrow and tempests that fall to us: for it hath ever so been afore miracle-coming.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Life , Wisdom , God , Faith

“While in improvisation there is a sense of craft within one's own instrument and in being able to interact with other musicians, in noise this disappears to the extent of anti-virtuosity becoming a virtue. A nihilist approach to improvisation in which the interaction is not based upon developing common denominators for some communication to happen among the players, but rather a matter of developing the freedom of individual expression.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Page 173.
"Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation and Noise Run Against the Idea of Intellectual Property" (October 2008)

Communication , Sense , Freedom

“We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Il faut de plus grandes vertus pour soutenir la bonne fortune que la mauvaise.
Maxim 25.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Evil

“The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Thinking About the Liquidity Trap", Journal of the Japanese and International Economies (2000)

Future , Country , Forgetting

“That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love , God , Books , Law

“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.”

Ernst Fischer (1899–1972) Austrian literature historian, publicist and writer

The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach (1965), Penguin Books, translated by Anna Bostock.

World , Art , Change

“Surely just about everybody has faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished, "If only somebody — somebody I trusted — could just tell me what to do!" Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes, but the virtues of "do it yourself" moral reasoning have their limits, and if you decide, after conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible and get the help of expert specialists.We applaud the wisdom of this course in all other important areas of decision-making (don't try to be your own doctor, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, and so forth). Even in the case of political decisions, like which way to vote, the policy of delegation can be defended. … Is the a dereliction of [one's] dut[y] as a citizen? I don't think so, but it does depend on my having good grounds for trusting [the delegate's] judgment. … That why those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: if they themselves haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand.This is perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry, and I do not shrink from it, even though it may offend many who think of themselves as deeply moral. It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of one's own religion without question, because -- to put it simply — it is the word of God (as interpreted, always, by the specialists to whom one has delegated authority). I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because "that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs… ] [sic] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh… ]" [sic], should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life , Wisdom , God , Faith

“In your town, in mine, in Wolverhampton, in Smethwick, in Birmingham, people see with their own eyes what they dread, the transformation during their own lifetime or, if they are already old, during their children's, of towns, cities and areas that they know into alien territory…Of the great multitude, numbering already two million, of West Indians and Asians in England, it is no more true to say that England is their country than it would be to say that the West Indies, or Pakistan, or India are our country. In these great numbers they are, and remain, alien here as we would be in Kingston or in Delhi; indeed, with the growth of concentrated numbers, the alienness grows, not by choice but by necessity. It is a human fact which good will, tolerance, comprehension and all the social virtues do not touch. The process is that of an invasion, not, of course, with the connotation either of violence or a premeditated campaign but in the sense that a people find themselves displaced in the only country that is theirs, by those who do have another country and whose home will continue to be elsewhere for successive generations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech to the Conservative Supper Club in Smethwick (8 September 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 189-190

Children , People , Home , Sense

“We can indeed recognize a tremendous difference in manner, but not in principle, between a shaman of the Tunguses and a European prelate: … for, as regards principle, they both belong to one and the same class, namely, the class of those who let their worship of God consist in what in itself can never make man better (in faith in certain statutory dogmas or celebration of certain arbitrary observances). Only those who mean to find the service of God solely in the disposition to good life-conduct distinguish themselves from those others, by virtue of having passed over to a wholly different principle.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Von einem tungusischen Schaman, bis zu dem Kirche und Staat zugleich regierenden europäischen Prälaten … ist zwar ein mächtiger Abstand in der Manier, aber nicht im Prinzip, zu glauben; denn was dieses betrifft, so gehören sie insgesammt zu einer und derselben Klasse, derer nämlich, die in dem, was an sich keinen bessern Menschen ausmacht (im Glauben gewisser statutarischer Sätze, oder Begehen gewisser willkürlicher Observanzen), ihren Gottesdienst setzen. Diejenigen allein, die ihn lediglich in der Gesinnung eines guten Lebenswandels zu finden gemeint sind, unterscheiden sich von jenen durch den Ueberschritt zu einem ganz andern und über das erste weit erhabenen Prinzip.
Book IV, Part 2, Section 3
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Life , God , Faith

“Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that's an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 308

Life , God , Truth , World

“Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Death , Women , Men , Fear

“We women have before us the noblest end to which a finite creature may attain; and our duty is nothing else than the fulfilment of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Lecture I, p. 23
The Duties of Women (1881)

Women , Law

“Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.”

Anatole France book Penguin Island

Book VII : Modern Times, Ch. IX : The Final Consequences
Penguin Island (1908)

Jealousy , Democracy

“It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Ocean of Wisdom: Guidelines for Living (1989) ISBN 094066609X
Unsourced variant: In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

“Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in an illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

Source: Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994), p. 99

People , Reality

“I think the statistics will prove that there is as much virtue among the Negroes as among the whites.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1873, Speech on Civil Rights Act (1873)

Thinking

“The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act III, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Life , Friendship , Pleasure , World

“It is not good to feel too much joy, nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)

Feeling , Joy

“a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of time. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they should understand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are,—this, which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Understanding , Sense , Time

“Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good. P. 43”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

Soul , Nature , Evil

“The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a President of the United States.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 75
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

World , History

“There is no such thing as morality—only varingly expedient conventions. What to one race is a crime, is virtue to another; crime in one era is virtue in another; even a crime in one class of society is at the same time and in the same society virtue in another class... It makes no difference whether people are called good or bad; we are all here; now; there is only one world in existence, and in it there prevail either expedient or inexpedient conditions for those who are alive.”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the organist
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

People , World , Time

“Whatever in Christ had the nature of satisfaction, was by virtue of His suffering or humiliation; whatever had the nature of merit, was by virtue of His obedience or righteousness.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 489.

Nature , Suffering , Christ

“Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 22

Love , Time

“A friend and a prudent friend, can help to shape a friend's decision. He does so by virtue of that love which makes the friend's problem his own, the friend's ego his own (so that after all it is not entirely "from outside"). For by virtue of that oneness which love can establish he is able to visualize the concrete situation calling for decision, visualize it from, as it were, the actual center of responsibility. Therefore it is possible for a friend - only for a friend and only for a prudent friend - to help with counsel and direction to shape a friend's decision or, somewhat in the manner of a judge, help to reshape it.
Such geniune and prudent loving friendship (amor amicitiae) - which has nothing in common with sentimental intimacy, and indeed is rather imperiled by such intimacy - is the sine qua non for geniune spirtual guidance. For only this empowers another to offer the kind of direction which - almost!”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

conforms to the concrete situation in which the decision must be made.
The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Love , Friendship , Problem , Decision

“When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won’t be neat; but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?", The New York Times (September 2, 2009)
The New York Times Columns

Hope , Problem

“As in geometry, the oblique must be known, as well as the right; and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in actions of life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney; with remarks, by Miss Porter (1807), p. 23. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.aa0000617332;view=1up;seq=53

Life , Beauty , Evil

“Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 159.

Wisdom

“If man had been created solely for the sake of this world, he would have had no need of being inspired with a soul so precious and exalted as to be greater than the angels themselves, especially so in that it derives no satisfaction whatsoever from all of the pleasures of this world. … "What is this analogous to? To the case of a city dweller who married a princess. If he brought her all that the world possessed, it would mean nothing to her, by virtue of her being a king's daughter. So is it with the soul. If it were to be brought all the delights of the world, they would be as nothing to it."”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

quote is from Koheleth Rabbah
Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

Pleasure , World , Angels , Soul

“I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 71

Men , Thinking

“There is no absolute virtue in iambic pentameter as such.. however well they may be done. There is no immediate virtue to rhythm even. These things are merely a means to an end.”

Edward Storer (1880–1944) British writer

'Essay on Imagism' (appended to 'Mirrors of Illusion', Sisley, London) 1909

“Superior people are only those who let it be discovered by others; the need to make it evident forfeits the very virtue they aspire to.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Pieces of Eight (1982)

People

“Longer than memory we have known that each animal has its power and place, each a skill, virtue, wisdom, innocence — a special access to the structure and flow of the world. Each surpasses ourselves in some way. Together, sacred, they help hold the cosmos together, making it a joy and beauty to behold, but above all a challenge to understand as story, drama, and sacred play.”

Paul Shepard (1925–1996) American human ecologist

The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (1996), Island Press, 1997, Part V, p. 173 https://books.google.it/books?id=dwq8BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA173.

Wisdom , World , Beauty , Way

“Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city.”

Thornton Wilder The Matchmaker

Malachi, in Act 3
The Matchmaker (1954)

Spring

“We know that they convinced millions that celibacy is the greatest of all virtues—that women are perpetual temptations, the enemies of true holiness—that monks and priests are nobler than fathers, that nuns are purer than mothers. We know that they taught the blessed absurdity of the Trinity—that God once worked at the trade of a carpenter in Palestine. We know that they divided knowledge into sacred and profane—taught that Revelation was sacred—that Reason was blasphemous—that faith was holy and facts false.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)

Women , God , Faith , Knowledge

“Virtue lies in the middle ground.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

"Los Viajes"

“All things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white... I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 13-14

God , Change , Help

“Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation—this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name—the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the “faithless faith” in the reality whose victims they are.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 119

Faith , Thinking , Reality , Light

“Felt the virtues of the Victorian times so condemned by Mr Strachey. The simple honesties can always be made a butt by the impish unrealiabilites.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Diary entry (23 April 1921), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 246. MacDonald was reading Strachey's biography of Queen Victoria. He finished the book two days later and wrote in his diary that he was relieved that Strachey "enmeshed in Victoria's virtues & the real drama of her last phase. As a good Victorian I shd. like to let myself loose upon him. A psychological study of unusual interest" (Marquand, p. 246)
1920s

Time

“The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Introduction
The Portable Matthew Arnold (Viking Press, 1949)

Men , Exercises , Intelligence , Courage

Quotes about virtue page 10

Quotes about virtue
page 10