Quotes about virtue (2023 quotes, page 16)

“Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", p. 23 (Nook Edition)
Cloud Atlas (2004)

Peace

“The prevailing conception is that education must be such as will enable one to acquire enough wealth to live on the plane of the bourgeoisie. That kind of education does not develop the aristocratic virtues. It neither encourages reflection nor inspires reverence for the good.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 49.

Education , Wealth

“You English are never as thorough, never as decided, never as dead-set in your views as your cousins over the Channel. You are a people of compromises, of opportunism, of amiable and business-like settlements; you can even strike a bargain with your own conscience and live ever happy afterwards. … This is no doubt a great virtue, because it has preserved you from great follies, and it is no doubt a great vice, because it has sadly refrigerated your enthusiasm and your “feu sacré.””

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. viii-ix.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

People , Business , Dead , Happiness

“I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming to the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/101/mode/1up pp. 101-102

Perfection , Effort , Justice , People

“To those possessed of breeding, learning, handsome looks,
Who have no wisdom, neither discipline, you need not bow.
But those who do have these two qualities,
Though lacking other virtues, you should revere.”

Nagarjuna (150–250) Indian philosopher

Letter to a Friend (Snow Lion: 2013), stanza 28

Wisdom , Learning

“In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. (It has always struck me as strange, by the way, that Alfred Nobel did not institute a philosophy prize, or for that matter that he instituted a physics prize but not a mathematics prize, to say nothing of a music prize - music is, after all, more universal than literature, which is bound to a particular language.) The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Dagens Nyheter http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/an-exclusive-interview-with-j-m-coetzee interview with David Attwell (December 8, 2003)

Life , Music , Way , Feeling

“Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.”

Charlton Ogburn (1911–1998) American journalist and author

The Maurauders (1959)
Introduction, page 6

Life , Wisdom , Universe

“If everyone were clothed with integrity,
If every heart were just, frank, kindly,
The other virtues would be well-nigh useless,
Since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience
The injustice of our fellows.”

Molière The Misanthrope

Si de probité tout était revêtu,
Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles,
La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles,
Puisqu'on en met l'usage à pouvoir sans ennui
Supporter dans nos droits l'injustice d'autrui.
Act V, sc. i
Le Misanthrope (1666)

Heart , Patience , Clothes

“Verily as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so verily there is a property in God of thirst and longing. (And of the virtue of this longing in Christ, we have to long again to Him: without which no soul cometh to Heaven.) And this property of longing and thirst cometh of the endless Goodness of God, even as the property of pity cometh of His endless Goodness. And though longing and pity are two sundry properties, as to my sight, in this standeth the point of the Spiritual Thirst: which is desire in Him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to His bliss. And all this was seen in the Shewing of Compassion: for that shall cease on Doomsday.
Thus He hath ruth and compassion on us, and He hath longing to have us; but His wisdom and His love suffereth not the end to come till the best time.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 31

Love , Wisdom , God , Soul

“We make a grave mistake when we assume this spirit of connectedness is automatic or inevitable. It is not a birthright. A united country is an enduring struggle. It takes collective work and individual sacrifice. It is not enough to call on others or wait for a leader to emerge who will exalt our national values. I believe this is the question we face, as citizens of this nation: what will we do to affirm this most critical American virtue?”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Booker, Cory, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, https://books.google.com/books?id=iFekDQAAQBAJ, 2017, Random House Publishing Group, 978-1-101-96518-4], as quoted in [Yanklowitz, Rabbi Shmuly, Standing Together In the Era of National Division: Review of United by Cory Booker, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuly-yanklowitz/standing-together-in-the-_b_9359900.html, 21 August 2018, The Huffington Post, March 3, 2016]
2016

Question , Waiting , Country

“Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are.”

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) British philosopher

"Moral Beliefs"

Pleasure , Fear , Justice , Courage

“Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

As quoted in Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1982) by Jonathon Green

“Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity"”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

IX. 16
The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life , Death , Men , Lie

“Base affections fall, when virtue riseth.”

Edward Fairfax (1580–1635) English translator

Book V, stanza 62
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

“The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

From the glossary of the first Programming Perl book.
Other

“I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

On the Irrepressible Conflict (1858)

Motivation , Learning , Selfishness

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Death , Fear , Sincerity , Sea

“Thomas Jefferson, the leading Enlightenment figure in the United States, along with Benjamin Franklin, who took exactly the same view, argued that dependence will lead to "subservience and venality", and will "suffocate[s] the germs of virtue". And remember, by dependence he meant wage labor, which was considered an abomination under classical liberal principles.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Education and Democracy, 1995

Dependency

“May Allah, by the virtue of the Hidden Imam, God will remove the evil of America and Israel from humanity…. I say to those dear people: Oh Iraqi brothers and sisters, America and Israel don't want your heads to remain attached to your bodies.”

Ahmad Jannati (1927) Iranian ayatollah

Friday Sermon In Tehran University By Ayatollah Jannati: America Will Collapse. We Must Be Patient. http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/142.htm June 2004.
America to collapse

God , People , Sister , Evil

“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Ah! combien de choses un enfant apprend à sa mère. Il y a tant de promesses faites entre nous et la vertu dans cette protection incessante due à un être faible, que la femme n’est dans sa véritable sphère que quand elle est mère; elle déploie alors seulement ses forces, elle pratique les devoirs de sa vie, elle en a tous les bonheurs et tous les plaisirs.
Part I, ch. XXXI.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Life , Pleasure , Learning

“Adorn thyself with simplicity and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. The poet says that Law rules all. And it is enough to remember that law rules all.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 31
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Love , God , Lie , Law

“Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

Disease

“Now analysis is of two kinds, the one directed to searching for the truth and called theoretical, the other directed to finding what we are told to find and called problematical. (1) In the theoretical kind we assume what is sought as if it were existent and true, after which we pass through its successive consequences, as if they too were true and established by virtue of our hypothesis, to something admitted: then (a), if that something admitted is true, that which is sought will also be true and the proof will correspond in the reverse order to the analysis, but (b), if we come upon something admittedly false, that which is sought will also be false. (2) In the problematical kind we assume that which is propounded as if it were known, after which we pass through its successive consequences, taking them as true, up to something admitted: if then (a) what is admitted is possible and obtainable, that is, what mathematicians call given, what was originally proposed will also be possible, and the proof will again correspond in reverse order to the analysis, but if (b) we come upon something admittedly impossible, the problem will also be impossible.”

Pappus of Alexandria (290–350) Greek mathematician of Antiquity

Source: The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908), Ch. IX. §6

Truth , Search , Problem , Success

“Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

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

Way , Feeling , Motivation , Nature

“A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

"Lord Hailsham speaks out", The Times, 14 June 1963, p. 9.
On the Profumo affair. Interview with Robert McKenzie on "Gallery" for BBC television.

“Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.”

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Noble Lord

A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)

“A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person attending to Dharma and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do.”

Vātsyāyana Indian logician

Source: The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated from the Sanscrit. In seven parts, with preface, introduction, and concluding remarks http://books.google.com/books?id=-ElAAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA9, Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, 1883, p.9

People , Pleasure , Intelligence , Sense

“What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues, not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 160.

Religion , Hope

“The seditious rebels claim that we are the rulers of Manchuria and only later penetrated central China to become its rulers. Their prejudices concerning the division of their and our country have caused many vitriolic falsehoods. What these rebels have not understood is the fact that Manchuria is for the Manchus the same as the birthplace is for the people of the central plain. Shun belonged to the Eastern Yi, and King Wen to the Western Yi. Does this fact diminish their virtues?”

Yongzheng Emperor (1678–1735) Qing Dynasty emperor

在逆贼等之意，徒谓本朝以满洲之君入为中国之主，妄生此疆彼界之私，遂故为讪谤诋讥之说耳，不知本朝之为满洲，犹中国之有籍贯，舜为东夷之人，文王为西夷之人，曾何损于圣德乎。
大义觉迷录 [Record of how great righteousness awakens the misguided], 近代中国史料丛刊 [Collectanea of materials on modern Chinese history] (Taipei: 文海出版社, 1966), vol. 36, 351–2, 1: 2b–3a

People , Country

“Whatever the virtue may be, from whatever source it may come, it is worthy of esteem… Mind, beauty, wealth, nobility, although the children of chance, all have their own value, as skill, learning and virtue have theirs.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Children , Beauty , Learning , Chance

“The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens; but it is equally true that a good revenue system is the life of an organized government. I meet you at a time when the nation has voluntarily burdened itself with a debt unprecedented in our annals. Vast as is its amount, it fades away into nothing when compared with the countless blessings that will be conferred upon our country and upon man by the preservation of the nation's life. Now, on the first occasion of the meeting of Congress since the return of peace, it is of the utmost importance to inaugurate a just policy, which shall at once be put in motion, and which shall commend itself to those who come after us for its continuance. We must aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils that necessarily followed a state of civil war.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Quote, First State of the Union Address (1865)

Life , War , Peace , Intelligence

“It is necessary that every man be surpassingly temperate. That person would most of all be a man of this sort if he were superior to money, which is what corrupts all men, and if, without caring about his life, he bestowed his pains on things that are just and pursued virtue.”

Iamblichus (240–320) Syrian philosopher

Source: Anonymous of Iamblichus, p. 149

Life , Men , Money , Pain

“Our slaves till the land, do the coarse and hard labor on our roads and canals, sweep our streets, cook our food, brush our boots, wait on our tables, hold our horses, do all hard work, and fill all menial offices. Your freemen at the North do the same work and fill the same offices. The only difference is, we love our slaves, and we are ready to defend, assist and protect them; you hate and fear your white servants, and never fail, as a moral duty, to screw down their wages to the lowest, and to starve their families, if possible, as evidence of your thrift, economy and management—the only English and Yankee virtues.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 320-321

Love , Hate , Fear , Family

“For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 3

People , Justice , Soul , Parting

“Perseverance is the master impulse of the firmest souls, the discipline of the noblest virtues, and the guaranty of acquisitions the most invigorating in their use and inestimable in their worth.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

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

Soul , Perseverance

“There is something beautiful about virtue, Captain. But I am just a poor guy.”

Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose

Scene VI.
Woyzeck (1879)

Beauty , Guy

“I have spent
Many a silent night in sighs and groans,
Ran over all my thoughts, despised my fate,
Reasoned against the reasons of my love,
Done all that smoothed-cheek Virtue could advise,
But found all bootless: 'tis my destiny
That you must either love, or I must die.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

Act I, sc. iii.
Tis Pity She's a Whore (1629-33?)

Love , Fate , Night

“Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affectation of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)

“So, in the time when virtue bloomed
In lords and cavaliers of old,
We lived with joy and courtesy,
But then they fled down distant roads
And for a long time lost the way
And nevermore returned; but now
The winter and sharp winds are gone,
And virtue blossoms as before.”

Matteo Maria Boiardo book Orlando Innamorato

Così nel tempo che virtù fioria
Ne li antiqui segnori e cavallieri,
Con noi stava allegrezza e cortesia,
E poi fuggirno per strani sentieri,
Sì che un gran tempo smarirno la via,
Né del più ritornar ferno pensieri;
Ora è il mal vento e quel verno compito,
E torna il mondo di virtù fiorito.
Bk. 2, Canto 1, st. 2
Orlando Innamorato

Way , Distant , Winter , Time

“Man had dominated the Earth by virtue of a single assumption: that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the effect of a previous cause. Manipulation of this basic law yielded rich results; there seemed no need for any other tool or instrumentality. Man congratulated himself on his generalized structure. He could live on desert, on plain or ice, in forest or in city; Nature had not shaped him to a special environment.
He was unaware of his vulnerability. Logic was the special environment; the brain was the special tool.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Infinity Science Fiction (July 1957)
Short fiction, The Men Return (1957)

Law , Nature

“In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

"Zinc"
The Periodic Table (1975)

Life

“Hindus are a terrorized society which has internalized and made a virtue out of a cowardly habit - the habit of surviving by flattering Islam and Muslims acquired during the long spell of Islamic invasions and rule. Mahatma Gandhi was the best representative of this damaged Hindu psyche.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Source: Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

“The recognition of authority to impose previous restraint upon publication in order to protect the community against the circulation of charges of misconduct, and especially of official misconduct, necessarily would carry with it the admission of the authority of the censor against which the constitutional barrier was erected. The preliminary freedom, by virtue of the very reason for its existence, does not depend, as this Court has said, on proof of truth.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Truth , Communication , Freedom , Dependency

“A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Don Juan", p. 403
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Friendship

“The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable; absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Vice and Virtue, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

“I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Harry Hubbard, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

Love , God , Courage , Loss

“Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Bande Mataram, 1907
India's Rebirth

Freedom

“Virtue is the same for a man and for a woman.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

“I think it (i. e., sainthood) is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 224

God , Thinking

“Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man … and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.”

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

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

Age , History , Reality , Time

“The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Fate , Hope , Time

“Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

God , World , Faith , Thinking

“Translated: We are no one's, always at a boundary, always someone’s dowry. Is it a wonder then that we are poor? For centuries now we have been seeking our true selves, yet soon we will not know who we are, we will forget that we ever wanted anything; others do us the honour of calling us under their banner for we have none, they lure us when we are needed and discard us when we have outserved the purpose they gave us. We remain the saddest little district of the world, the most miserable people of the world, losing our own persona and nor being able to take on anyone else's, torn away and not accepted, alien to all and everyone, including those with whom we are most closely related, but who will not recognise us as their kin. We live on a divide between worlds, at the border between nations, always at a fault to someone and first to be struck. Waves of history strike us as a sea cliff. Crude force has worn us out and we made a virtue out of a necessity: we grew smart out of spite.”

Meša Selimović book Death and the Dervish

So what are we? Fools? Miserable wretches? The most complex people in the world. No one is such a joke of history as we are. Only yesterday we were something that we now wish to forget, yet we have become nothing else. We stopped half way through, flabbergasted. There is no place we can go to any more. We are torn off, but not accepted. As a dead-end branch that streamed away from mother river has neither flow, nor confluence it can rejoin, we are too small to be a lake, too big to be sapped by the earth. With an unclear feeling of shame about our ancestry and guilt about our renegade status, we do not want to look into the past, but there is no future to look into; we therefore try to stop the time, terrified with the prospect of whatever solution might come about. Both our brethren and the newcomers despise us, and we defend ourselves with our pride and our hatred. We wanted to preserve ourselves, and that is exactly how we lost the knowledge of our identity. The greatest misery is that we grew fond of this dead end we are mired in and do not want to abandon it. But everything has a price and so does our love for what we are stuck with.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

People , World , History , Sea

“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and justice.”

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. III : The Master, p. 73

Justice

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Love , Hate , Feeling , Soul

“[T]he degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system … simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems.”

Jerry Fodor (1935–2017) American philosopher

Source: Modularity of Mind (1983), p. 107–108 as cited in: Philip Robbins, " Modularity of Mind http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

“Anon Britannia droops the pensive head, While round increase the rising hills of dead. Ah! cruel blindness to Columbia's state! Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late. Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

Dead

“Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.”

John Milton book Tetrachordon

Tetrachordon (1644–1645)

Men , Law

“Some virtues are only seen in affliction and some in prosperity.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 257 (25 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Affliction

“What’s odd about Friedman’s absolutism on the virtues of markets and the vices of government is that in his work as an economist’s economist he was actually a model of restraint. As I pointed out earlier, he made great contributions to economic theory by emphasizing the role of individual rationality—but unlike some of his colleagues, he knew where to stop. Why didn’t he exhibit the same restraint in his role as a public intellectual?
The answer, I suspect, is that he got caught up in an essentially political role. Milton Friedman the great economist could and did acknowledge ambiguity. But Milton Friedman the great champion of free markets was expected to preach the true faith, not give voice to doubts. And he ended up playing the role his followers expected. As a result, over time the refreshing iconoclasm of his early career hardened into a rigid defense of what had become the new orthodoxy.
In the long run, great men are remembered for their strengths, not their weaknesses, and Milton Friedman was a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time, and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived. But there’s a good case for arguing that Friedmanism, in the end, went too far, both as a doctrine and in its practical applications. When Friedman was beginning his career as a public intellectual, the times were ripe for a counterreformation against Keynesianism and all that went with it. But what the world needs now, I’d argue, is a counter-counterreformation.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Who Was Milton Friedman?", The New York Review of Books (February 15, 2007)
The New York Review of Books articles

Men , World , Faith , Communication

“Virtue is like a rich stone — best plain set.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Beauty
Essays (1625)

“I, Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr, Governor of the state of Maryland, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of Maryland, including but not limited to Title 14 and Section 13-702 of the Public Safety Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, declare that a state of emergency exists in Baltimore City, I call the Maryland National Guard into action and state service and hereby authorize the Maryland Emergency Management Agency or other appropriate state authority, during this emergency period, to engage, deploy, and coordinate available resources.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Declaration of Emergency https://governor.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EO01.01.2015.16.pdf" (27 April 2015).

Law

“Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

God , Secret , Game , Sense

“By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 5

Way

“To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that we have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the slave-trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom…While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will I at least be found.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/133.html to the electors at Edinburgh (May 1839)

Men , Education , Freedom , Fight

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate. Variants and derivatives of this that are often quoted include:
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.

Justice

“Admit their maxims, and the universe returns to a frightful chaos; all things are thrown into disorder upon the earth; all the notions of virtue and vice are overthrown; the most inviolable laws of society are abolished: the discipline of morality is swept away; the government of states and empires ceases to be subject to any rule; the whole harmony of political institutions is dissolved; and the human race becomes an assemblage of madmen, barbarians, cheats, unnatural wretches who have no other laws but force, no other curb than their passions and the dread of authority, no other tie than irreligion and independence, no other gods than themselves.”

Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) French Catholic bishop and famous preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 348.

God , Law , Universe , Passion

“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms have been so much disputed that they have begun to sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

"A Defence of Humilities"
The Defendant (1901)

“Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Knowledge of Character"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“There is an affected humility more unsufferable than downright pride, as hypocrisy is more abominable than libertimsm. Take care that your virtues be genuine and unsophisticated.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

“To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 191
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“One should emulate works and deeds of virtue, not arguments about it.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“Rousseauist and Baconian, though often superficially at odds with one another, have co-operated in undermining, not merely religious tradition, but another tradition which in the Occident goes back finally, not to Judea, but to ancient Greece. This older tradition may be defined as humanistic. The goal of the humanist is poised and proportionate living. This he hopes to accomplish by observing the law of measure. … Decorum is supreme for the humanist even as humility takes precedence over all other virtues in the eyes of the Christian. Traditionally the idea of decorum has been associated, often with a considerable admixture of mere formalism, with the idea of the gentleman. Humanism and religion in their various forms have at times conflicted, but have more often been in alliance with one another. As Burke says in a well-known passage: "Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things that are connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion."”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 6-7

Age , World , Religion , Law

“So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die,
Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough,
And Virtue also says:
We are not yet friends enough.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

"Exeat"
The Best Beast (1966)

“[His reply to the chairman's other stock question, which had previously never failed to embarrass the claimant: "Tell me, Mr. Strachey, what would you do if you saw a German soldier trying to violate your sister?" With an air of noble virtue:] "I would try to get between them."”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

Reported in Robert Graves Good-bye to All That (1929), ch. 23.
Said during the First World War to a military tribunal assessing his claim to be treated as a conscientious objector. Variants along the lines of "I should try to interpose my body" are also sometimes quoted.

Question , Sister

“He who studies a text or microbes or stars must have nothing to do with his subjectivity… that is an ideal that one must try to find by a certain practice. Let us say that objectivity is a virtue, and a very difficult one to practice.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

Celui qui étudie un texte ou des microbes ou les étoiles doit se défaire de sa subjectivité... c'est là un idéal qu'il faut essayer de rejoindre par une certaine pratique. Disons que l'objectivité est une vertu, d'ailleurs très diffice à pratiquer.
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre (2001)

Star , Study

“In fact the wives of the patriarchs, all untruthful, and one a kleptomaniac, but illustrate the law, that the cardinal virtues are seldom found in oppressed classes.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Law

“I shall be most grateful to the gods if I am not disappointed in the opinion which I have of you. For, while we find that the great majority of other men seek the society of those friends who join them in their follies and not of those to admonish them, just as they prefer the most pleasant to the most wholesome, you, I think, are minded otherwise as I judge from the industry you display in your general education. For when one sets for himself the highest standard of conduct, it is probable that in his relation to others he will approve only of those who exhort him to virtue. But most of all you would be spurred on to strive for noble deeds if you should realize that it is from them most of all that we also derive pleasure in the true sense. For while the result of indolence and love of surfeit is that pain follows on the heels of pleasure, on the other hand, devoted toil in the pursuit of virtue, and self-control in the ordering of one's life always yield delights that are pure and more abiding. In the former case we experience pain following upon pleasure, in the latter we enjoy pleasure after pain.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

Verses 45-46.
To Demonicus

Love , Life , Men , God

“A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

A Plea For Keeping Alive the U.S. Film Industry’s Competitive Energy (1995)

Life , Time

“The Pythagoreans thought those who teach for the sake of reward show themselves worse than sculptors, or artists who perform the work sitting. For these, when someone orders wood to make a statue of Hermes, search for wood suited to receive the proper form; while those pretend that they can readily produce the works of virtue from every nature.”

Iamblichus (240–320) Syrian philosopher

Life of Pythagoras

Search , Nature

“Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 11
The Present Crisis (1844)

Truth , Faith

“Virtues, n. pl. Certain abstentions.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“Modesty is oftner mistaken than any other Virtue.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections

“Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice — a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.”

Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer

Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety (2000), p. 233

Democracy

“If the Church were to start transforming herself into a directly political subject, … she would do less, not more, for the poor and for justice, because she would lose her independence and her moral authority, identifying herself with a single political path and with debatable partisan positions. The Church is the advocate of justice and of the poor, precisely because she does not identify with politicians nor with partisan interests. Only by remaining independent can she teach the great criteria and inalienable values, guide consciences and offer a life choice that goes beyond the political sphere. To form consciences, to be the advocate of justice and truth, to educate in individual and political virtues: that is the fundamental vocation of the Church in this area. And lay Catholics must be aware of their responsibilities in public life; they must be present in the formation of the necessary consensus and in opposition to injustice.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

in Origins, published by National Catholic News Service, vol. 37, p. 22

Life , Truth , Education , Justice

“It is time to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term “person of faith” as a compliment.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 260

Faith , Time , Personality

“Every germinating truth is revolutionary against prevailing errors; every germinating virtue, revolutionary against prevailing vices opposed to it. And, therefore, there is always an outcry at the rising up of new youthful truths and virtues.”

Karl Georg von Raumer

Source: Contributions to the history and improvement of the german universities - A history of pedagogy; volume 4 (1855), p. 99

Truth , Youth , Error

“Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

“Servants, when their lords no longer sway,
Their minds no more to righteous courses bend.
Half that man's virtue doth Zeus take away,
Whom he surrenders to the servile day.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XVII. 320–323 (tr. Worsley).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“The south repudiates the idea that a pecuniary dependence on the federal government is one of the legitimate means of holding the states together. A moneyed interest in the government is essentially a base interest; and just so far as it operates to bind the feelings of those who are subjected to it to the government,—just so far as it operates in creating sympathies and interests that would not otherwise exist,—is it opposed to all the principles of free government, and at war with virtue and patriotism. Sir, the link which binds the public creditors, as such, to their country, binds them equally to all governments, whether arbitrary or free. In a free government, this principle of abject dependence, if extended through all the ramifications of society, must be fatal to liberty.”

Robert Hayne (1791–1839) American politician

Hayne's Speech on Mr. Foot's Resolution, January 21, 1830, page 9.

Money , War , Feeling , Idea

“But before we attempt to set ourselves up as exponents of universal reform, it would be wise to remember that progress is of slow growth, and also to remember that moderation, patience, forbearance, and charity are virtues in their own right. The only action which can be effective in the long run is that which helps others to help themselves. Before we assume too great responsibilities in the governing of others, it would be the part of wisdom very completely to discharge our responsibilities for governing ourselves. A large amount of work has to be done at home before we can start in on the neighbors, and very considerable duties have to be performed in America before we undertake the direction of the rest of the world. But we must at all times do the best we can for ourselves without forgetting others, and the best we can for our own country without forgetting other nations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Wisdom , World , Home , Universe

“Let the blessing of St. Peter's Master be…upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his Providence, and be quiet and go a-angling.”

Izaak Walton book The Compleat Angler

Part I, ch. 21.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

Lovers

“The French Jacobins were the first to realize the political potential of class resentment. Exploiting it, they conjured constant conspiracies by aristocrats and other enemies of the revolution: shortly before their fall they drafted legislation expropriating private wealth and had the unmistakable communistic implications. It was from the study of the French Revolution that its aftermath that Marx formulated the theory of class struggle as the dominant feature of history. In his theory, social antagonism was for the first time accorded moral legitimacy: hate, which Judaism condemned as self-destructive, and Christianity (in the guise of anger) treated as one of the cardinal sins, was made into a virtue.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 262

Hate , History , Study , Time

“To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 196

Death , Men

“Virtue's a mere name,
Or 'tis high venture that achieves high aim.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, epistle xvii, p. 138
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles

“…let it be remembered that as photography is our chosen medium, then if photography unaided will give us the effect we want there is no especial virtue in altering it.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 79

“Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother’s place in warding off evil. These are the three cardinal virtues in matrimony.”

Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève

Les mères de famille devraient rechercher de pareils hommes pour leurs filles: l'Esprit est protecteur comme la Divinité, le Désenchantement est perspicace comme un chirurgien, l'Expérience est prévoyante comme une mère. Ces trois sentiments sont les vertus théologales du mariage.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.

Wisdom , Men , Marriage , Evil

“When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III “Of the three evil things”). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego.”

Gilles Deleuze book Nietzsche and Philosophy

Source: Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), p. 7

Way , Evil

“Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did not obscure his reason.”

Horace Walpole book The Castle of Otranto

Section 1
The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Nature , Passion

Quotes about virtue page 16

Quotes about virtue
page 16