Quotes about virtue (2023 quotes, page 13)

“As the reader is aware, at the cradle of our learning stood the philosophy of Asia Minor and Greece, itself influenced in turn by Indian and Oriental philosophical and religious conceptions. It is the tragedy of this philosophy that, although it was traditionally directed towards the undogmatic acquisition of wisdom and virtue, always regarding the freedom of human rational thought in visionary fashion as the highest good, it nevertheless inevitably led to a mental hardening of the arteries into coercive thought models.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: Prognostics, 1971, p. 57. Chapter 4: Philosophical models of the future http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Polak%204.%20Philosophical%20Models.htm

Wisdom , Fashion , Freedom , Learning

“The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete sceptics in religion.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 2: Moral Influences in Early Youth. My Father's Character and Opinions.

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/45/mode/1up p. 45

Wisdom , Religion , World

“Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not Governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future.”

P. D. James book The Children of Men

The Children of Men (1992)

Money , People , Future

“Virtue is reason which has become energy.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Tugend ist zur Energie gewordne Vernunft.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #23

“May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,
that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives
but bad receipts for payment in the lower world.
Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go,
all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book IX, line 402
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Life , World , Travel , Game

“Justice is happiness according to virtue.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter V, Section 48, p. 310

Justice , Happiness

“By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Men , Error , Universe

“Unfortunately, several decades of Keynesian instruction on the virtues of budget deficits have left the public and our political leaders confused about the costs of running persistent deficits. […] Keynes has been that influential defunct scribbler for the past generation. But who would ever have thought that the politician hearing Keynes's voice in the air might be Ronald Reagan”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"Counterrevolution in Progress", Challenge (1988).

Past

“It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny — and it has been bitter — whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

From the Letters of Lord Byron (2 January 1817), p. 6.
Lord Byron's Armenian Exercises and Poetry (1870)

Peace , Future , Country

“We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the experience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

22 August 1875.
The Walk With God (1919)

Children , Angels , Nature , Learning

“THERE is a passage of Holy Writ that exhorts us that if there be any good things, such as love, virtue, truth, and so on, we ought to think on these things.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Everyday Wisdom (1927)

Love , Truth , Thinking

“For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Health and Education http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17437/17437-h/17437-h.htm, The Science of Health (1874).

“Ask any British journalist who were their editor-heroes over the last 30 or 40 years and two names keep recurring. One is Harry Evans. The other is Hugh Cudlipp. Why were they so admired? Because they seemed to represent the best of journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers. Even if you missed their editorships – as I did with Hugh Cudlipp – both men wrote inspiring books about journalism: about how to do it, but, more importantly, about why it mattered.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Source: 2010s, Does journalism exist? (2010), p. 1.

Men , Books , Courage , Sense

“Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 161.

“The figure [neo-roman writers] wish to hold out for our admiration is described again and again. He is plain and plain-hearted; he is upright and full of integrity; above all he is a man of true manliness, of dependable valour and fortitude. His virtues are repeatedly contrasted with the vices characteristic of the obnoxious lackeys and parasites who flourish at court. The courtier, instead of being plain and plain-hearted, is lewd, dissolute and debauched; instead of being upright, he is cringing, servile and base; instead of being brave, he is fawning, abject and lacking in manliness.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 95-96

Heart , Dependency

“What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”

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

Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n'est souvent qu'un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n'est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes.
Maxim 1.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Women , Men

“For years they have known they are in the presence of something stronger than they—a mystery that renders them powerless. Already constellated is a "god consciousness"—awesome and holy—that has nothing to do with the church or with groups. They know they have to engage in a different arena of reality. That arena is the psyche. By virtue of their temperament, training, consciousness, these women are blessed (or cursed) with an introspective nature, an exploring mind, an invincible curiosity about themselves which connects them to their own inner microscope. For better or for worse, they are convinced that the solution to their lives is in submission not to an externally imposed authority which they cannot understand, but to a truth that abides in themselves.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 99

Women , God , Truth , Understanding

“Honor and dignity of man is only in virtue and piety.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 128
Religious-based Quotes

“In all her charms, set Virtue in their eye,
And let them see their loss, despair, and—die!”
Virtutem videant, intabescantque relicta.

William Gifford (1756–1826) English critic, editor and poet

Translation of Persius, Satire III, line 71 (38).

Loss , Despair

“He is specially deserving of our hatred, in that being wicked he has all the outward signs of virtue.”

Aeschines (-389–-314 BC) Attic orator; statesman

99.
Ctesiphontem

“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; XXVI
Lacon (1820)

“I think there is at least one moral theory of respectable lineage and good independent credentials that can accommodate such fairly minimal intuitions about us and animals. This is the theory Hume offers us. I do not consider Hume a forerunner of utilitarianism, and therefore what I shall go on to say in defense of Hume is not intended as a defense of any version of utilitarianism. I see Hume to be much closer to Aristotle than to Mill, to be offering us a theory about human virtues, not a theory about utility maximization and the duties that might involve.”

Annette Baier (1929–2012) New Zealand philosopher

Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, p. 68

Thinking , Animals

“I know how it is that the path of the Mean is not walked in — The knowing go beyond it, and the stupid do not come up to it. I know how it is that the path of the Mean is not understood — The men of talents and virtue go beyond it, and the worthless do not come up to it.”

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

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Men , Stupidity

“The principal merit which should be required in our friends, is virtue : It is that which assures us they are capable of friendship, and worthy of it : expect nothing from your connections, when they have not this foundation.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: An Essay on Friendship, 1732, pp. 54-55

Friendship

“When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out.Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first — and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment — 'tis a point of HONOUR.I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book IX (1767), Ch. 10.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Fate , Change , Time , Waiting

“The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Circles
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#87
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e. g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of — lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; — are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e. g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

New York 1907, p. 54, 55
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Men , God , People , Truth

“In the entire circuit of the globe those races which have developed under a tropical sun are found to be indolent and fickle. From the standpoint of survival of the fittest, such vices are virtues, for severe and continuous exertion under tropical conditions bring prostration and predisposition to disease. Therefore, if such races are to adopt that industrious life which is a second nature to races of the temperate zones, it is only through some form of compulsion. The negro could not possibly have found a place in American industry had he come as a free man.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

pg. 136.
Races and Immigrants in America, 1907

Life , Disease , Nature , Sun

“The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in their judgment could set off the authority, elegance and refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen Beatitudes; and indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the intelligence. The court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love , Women , Men , Friendship

“It may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Question

“The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section III, p. 20

Religion

“A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wildlife in American Culture", p. 178.

“Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy -- the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps -- to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.”

Chelsea Manning (1987) United States Army soldier and whistleblower

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Democracy , Confidence , Decision , Tear

“By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Ariadne (1895)

Love , Imagination

“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

The Assault on Integrity http://homepage.mac.com/tomdalekeever/greenspanintegrity.html 1963
1950–60s

Men , Fear , Law

“Within a surprisingly short space of time, however, the fortunes of the neo-roman theory began to decline and fall. … One reason for this collapse was that the social assumptions underlying the theory began to appear outdated and even absurd. With the extension of the manners of the court to the bourgeoisie in the early eighteenth century, the virtues of the independent country gentleman began to look irrelevant and even inimical to a polite commercial age. The hero of the neo-roman writers came to be viewed not as plain-hearted but as rude and boorish; not as upright but as obstinate and quarrelsome; not as a man of fortitude but of mere insensibility.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 96-97

Age , Appearance , Time , Heart

“You English are loath to embrace the virtues of the warrior. Such an act embarrasses you. You prefer to see yourselves as civilians summoned reluctantly to arms, as-what is the word?-'amatuers.' But you are warriors, you English. You are, Chapman. Trust me, who has faced you in the field.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Oberleutnant Ehrlich, wounded German POW, p. 237
Killing Rommel (2008)

“Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part Four, Ch. I (p.185)
The Good Soldier (1915)

Life

“A white man's government? Not a government of intelligence, of justice, of virtue? Not a government by the consent of the governed, but a government of complexion? Where reason is skin deep? Who is a white man? Is a Spaniard? Is a Creole? Is an octoroon? Ohio says that a blood mixture of half-and-half will do for her. But if you have a qualification for the enjoyment of equal rights which vast numbers of our population cannot by nature satisfy, it is as if you made it depend upon a man's height or the color of his hair. You ask us to prefer a system of accidents to one of principles. You ask us to agree that a worthless, idle, drunken rascal, whose face might possibly be white if it could ever be washed clean enough, may be more safely trusted with political power, than an honest, intelligent, sober, industrious colored citizen.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Justice , Color , Intelligence , Nature

“Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 37

Religion , Support , Waiting

“Distrust was counted as a democratic virtue, and over-confidence as a democratic vice.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Confidence

“Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 14
Attributed
Variant: Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

God , Confidence , Light

“Few of the virtues are really useful. Fidelity leads to lost opportunity, truth-telling to injured feelings, charity to additional solicitations. The least productive, and possibly the most overrated, is faith. The faithful deny reason, close their minds to the evidence of their senses, and remain unfailingly optimistic in the face of disaster. They inevitably get just what they deserve.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 27 (p. 375)

Truth , Faith , Feeling , Sense

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Pain , People , Education , Feeling

“Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.”

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 17, “The Cockatrice” (p. 237)

Way , Change , Time , Personality

“To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Under the Microscope (1872)

Religion

“In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,—probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.”

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

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

Suffering , Falseness , Country

“Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;
And therefore no true saint allows
They shall be suffer'd to espouse.”

Samuel Butler (poet) Hudibras

Canto I, line 1293
Hudibras, Part III (1678)

“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, p. 4
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)

Men , Lie

“I knew that it was human nature which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found myself I was bound to discover superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human idealism and human impatience and human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and vices, mixed and confused in individuals, created what we called “History”. Yet I could see no way in which the vicious circle of aspiration and desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 339)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

War , Way , Imagination , History

“If you stay in Canada, I can, too. Everybody says Canada is a hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some people it is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away it will never be any better. So let the geniuses of easy virtue go southward; I know what they feel too well to blame them. But for some of us there is no choice; let Canada do what she will with us, we must stay.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Fortune, My Foe (1949).

People , Feeling , Country

“Shine as they may, there are no kings
Adorned with jewelry and pearls
That shine as does a man restrained
Adorned with virtue's ornament.”

Buddhaghosa Indian writer

1.24, pp. 13-14
The Path of Purification

“The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.””

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

It dies out.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1901)

Time , Personality

“The social conditions of the British people in the early years of the twentieth century cannot be contemplated without deep anxiety. … We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on the old happy-go-lucky way, the richer classes ever growing in wealth and in number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I think there is nothing before us but savage strife between class and class, with an increasing disorganization, with an increasing destruction of human strength and human virtue—nothing, in fact, but that dual degeneration which comes from the simultaneous waste of extreme wealth and of extreme want.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 138-139
Early career years (1898–1929)

People , Way , Thinking , Wealth

“Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her
Is righted even when men grant they err.”

George Chapman Monsieur D'Olive

Monsieur D'Olive, Act I, scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Men

“Believe it or not, after the Second Vatican Council anticlericalism is a Catholic virtue. In elaborating a theology of laity, as many call it, and speaking of a hierarchy of service rather than of domination in the Church, Vatican II implicitly endorsed opposition to clericalism, which is a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious hierarchy. Clearly, this sort of anticlericalism has nothing to do with the other anticlericalism.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

The A-Word http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2008/10/a-word.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 22/10/2008

“"You need not think of [Black Jade] any more, for she died a few days ago while you were unconscious!"
Pao-yu sat up and cried, "Is it true?"
"Of course it is true," Precious Virtue said. "Do you think I would say such a terrible thing of anyone if it were not? […]"
Pao-yu cried unrestrainedly until he fell back, exhausted and unconscious.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 306–307

Thinking

“It can fairly be said of John Smith that he had all the virtues of a Scottish presbyterian, but none of the vices.”

Menzies Campbell (1941) British Liberal Democrat politician and advocate

Hansard HC 6ser vol 243 col 437 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199394/cmhansrd/1994-05-12/Debate-1.html
Paying tribute to Labour Party leader John Smith, a friend at the Scottish Bar, in the House of Commons on 12 May 1994.

“If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 31

“Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 11
Essais (1595), Book II

Nature

“Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.”

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) English poet

Considering the Snail (l. 5-10)
Collected Poems by Thom Gunn (1994)

Sun

“John Rawls says that justice is the 'first virtue' of social institutions, meaning that it is more fundamental than any other, and that we cannot expect individuals to accept social regulation, and engage in social co-operation unless the terms on which society operates are seen as reasonably just. To talk as though Plato and Aristotle saw justice as a matter of the terms of social and political co-operation may suggest a modern and individualist perspective foreign to both. Yet it is not wholly misleading.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Justice

“And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 197–199. Compare Knolles, History (under a portrait of Mustapha I): "Greatnesse on Goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,/ And leaves, for Fortune’s ice, Vertue’s ferme land".
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Love

“To the best of my understanding, bigotry, intolerance and hatred are not values, but then faith isn't a virtue either.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Faith , Understanding

“The tax here involved is bad not because it takes money from the pockets of the appellees. If that were all, a wholly different question would be presented. It is bad because, in the light of its history and of its present setting, it is seen to be a deliberate and calculated device in the guise of a tax to limit the circulation of information to which the public is entitled in virtue of the constitutional guaranties.”

George Sutherland (1862–1942) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, United States Senator, member of the United States House of Re…

Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936)

Money , History , Question , Light

“But the parallels go further, Greeks, Jews, and Armenians after their subordination to others and emigration or expulsion from their original homelands became Diaspora ethno-religious communities cultivating the particular virtues and aptitudes of their traditions. These included a respect for scholarship and learning, derived from constant study of sacred texts (and in the Greek case some of their ancient secular texts seen through religious filters); and hence a generally high status accorded to religious scholars and clergy within each enclave. Allied to this was a marked aptitude for literary expression—poetic, philosophical, legal, liturgical, linguistic, and historical.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999), Chapter: Greeks, Armenians and Jews.

Communication , Study , Learning

“Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

H 13
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788)

“For if art, like religion, belongs to no country, it is perhaps itself the only country and the only true religion. Only those hear its call who have that siren’s song within them. The inner riches of the eyes bring out the secret virtues of the work, and little by little they begin to speak… Every artist, every work of every artist, establishes, in his or its own absolutely inaccessible way, this contact of the spirit with the spirit. Provided of course, that the viewer is in 'a state of grace.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 104

Secret , Religion , Art , Way

“The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtues. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the' conquering that gives a hero his title to renown.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 450.

Fight , Perseverance

“[Voluntary social work] has indeed become a new profession and quite a large number of people now make their livelihood by such work. At the same time the State has expanded its social services beyond all recognition within the space of a single generation and a large part of the produce of taxation is now devoted to every form of social amelioration… I should like to see us less concerned with palliation and more concerned with providing the means whereby our people by self-help, that demoded Victorian virtue, should be able to work out their own salvation, even if in fear and trembling.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 292-3

People , Fear , Time , Help

“I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.”

George Fox (1624–1691) English Dissenter and founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Statement of 1651, quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice http://www.quaker.org.uk/qfp/chap24/24.01.html#24.01, Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Life , War , Peace

“Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!”

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

2000s, 2001, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

“Above all, money-making and other external indices of social success must become subordinate to the inner attainments of moral and intellectual virtue.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 314

Money , Success

“Men possess virtues and We are ravished out of self by purified Love, even to the Face of God, freed and emptied of every event and illusion. This is the contemplative life of highest price. the Divine likeness in differing measure;
in greater or lesser degree have they found their own essence in the depth of themselves,
according to their dignity. But God fulfils all; and each, clearer or fainter, according to the measure of his love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

Love , Life , Men , God

“In the early days of the computer revolution computer designers and numerical analysts worked closely together and indeed were often the same people. Now there is a regrettable tendency for numerical analysts to opt out of any responsibility for the design of the arithmetic facilities and a failure to influence the more basic features of software. It is often said that the use of computers for scientific work represents a small part of the market and numerical analysts have resigned themselves to accepting facilities "designed" for other purposes and making the best of them. […] One of the main virtues of an electronic computer from the point of view of the numerical analyst is its ability to "do arithmetic fast."”

James H. Wilkinson (1919–1986) English mathematician

Need the arithmetic be so bad!
Some Comments from a Numerical Analyst (1971)

People , Failure , Parting

“Kierkegaard … likes to quote the church father Lactantius, who said that the virtues of paganism were glittering vices. Nietzsche's response is that the virtues of the Christians are splendid vices. They are splendid because they represent no small spiritual achievement; but they are doubly vices first because they mask a self-centered will to power that by their own criteria is the essence of immorality, and second, because in hiding this fact from themselves and from others, the votaries of the "virtues" engage in systematic self-deception and hypocrisy. Here again Nietzsche invokes his principle: "To become moral is not in itself moral," meaning that the act of adopting certain values need not be an act instantiating those values but can just as easily violate them. "Subjection to morality can be slavish or vain or self-interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or an act of despair, like subjection to a prince: in itself it is nothing moral."”

Merold Westphal (1940)

Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism, pp. 246-247

Quotes , Despair

“The end of philosophic education, on many ancient views, is not a body of propositions to be measured against an equally propositional and already apprehended truth. The end is, rather, the having (hexis, habitus) of abiding intellectual excellences, of a power (arete, virtus) to think truthfully.”

Mark D. Jordan (1953)

Authority and persuasion in philosophy (1985)

Truth , Education , Thinking

“I believe Beauty is the condition of the perfect life, just as important as Virtue and Truth.”

Stuart Merrill (1863–1915) American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language

"Credo"

Life , Truth , Beauty , Perfection

“Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Men of Action
Alain On Happiness (1928)

“There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content.”

Max Beerbohm book Mainly on the Air

"Fenestralia" http://books.google.com/books?id=YZMhAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA147#v=onepage, Mainly on the Air (1946), The Atlantic ( April 1944 http://books.google.com/books?id=5KAGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA85#v=onepage)

Literature , Painting

“So Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by Justice lopt and bound;
Nay, where the People would be great,
As necessary to the State,
As Hunger is to make 'em eat.
Bare Virtue can't make Nations live
In Splendor; they, that would revive
A Golden Age, must be as free,
For Acorns, as for Honesty.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

"The Moral", line 17, p. 24
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Hunger , People , Age , Justice

“…for there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens…”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

"Holy Living" (1650) ch. 2, section 6. "Of Contentedness in all Estates".

Exercises

“The Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him; teaching him many solid virtues, and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure,—among which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education of the Working Man. As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;—not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should have something to speak!”

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

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Life , Wisdom , Men , God

“Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Preface to A Thurber Garland (1955)
From other writings

Sense , Speed

“Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain,
Have something in them that surpasses the human.
They lead a life of such innocence,
That the heavens owe them some recognition:
That they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down
Is hardly the result of common virtues.”

Pierre Corneille Polyeucte

Sans doute vos chrétiens, qu'on persécute en vain,
Ont quelque chose en eux qui surpasse l'humain:
Ils mènent une vie avec tant d'innocence,
Que le ciel leur en doit quelque reconnaissance;
Se relever plus forts, plus ils sont abattus,
N'est pas aussi l'effet des communes vertus.
Sévère, act V, scene vi.
Polyeucte (1642)

Life