Quotes about Virtue
The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.
— Brennan Manning
Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation.
— Henri Nouwen
For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God's first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.
— Henri Nouwen
Have courage," we often say to one another. Courage is a spiritual virtue. The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means "heart. A courageous act is an act coming from the heart. A courageous word is a word arising from the heart. The heart, however, is not just the place where our emotions are located. The heart is the centre of our being, the centre of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions.
— Henri Nouwen
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
— Henry David Thoreau
By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.
— Henry David Thoreau
Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
— Henry David Thoreau
You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass—the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
— Henry David Thoreau
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
— Henry David Thoreau
Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.
— Henry David Thoreau
Along with every right thing to do is a right way to do it.
— Henry Blackaby
Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness.
— Herman Melville