Quotes about Virtue

In short, contrary to the founders—and in ways they do not realize themselves—Americans today are heedlessly pursuing a vision of freedom that is short-lived and suicidal. Once again, freedom without virtue, leadership without character, business without trust, law without customs, education without meaning and medicine, science and technology without human considerations can end only in disaster.

Thus a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. ST. AUGUSTINE, CITY OF GOD

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." Rochefoucauld's maxim

This means that, bad though it is and dangerous though its slipway may prove, there is a sense in which hypocrisy may be preferable to wickedness. Hypocrisy still cares enough about virtue to want to pretend to be virtuous, or at least it recognizes that the society around still prizes virtue enough to make it worth flattering.

Americans might ponder two quotations. One is the much-cited, self-congratulatory saying attributed to Tocqueville (but whose source no one has so far been able to show me): "America is great because America is good." The other is the very real saying of Samuel Johnson, attacking the similar self-congratulatory "greatness" of the English: "We continue every day to show by new proofs, that no people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it.

Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is—Never look for justice, but never cease to give

A heart filled with faith, hope, and love leads to a righteous, obedient life.

your alarm that is your conscience only sounds based on the standard that your heart has surrendered to. This means that a good and godly moral value system will all your conscience to function properly, but a bad and self-centered moral value system will mean that your conscience will do you harm.

The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness; He has repaid me according to the cleanness of my hands.

And I have been blameless before Him and kept myself from iniquity.

To the faithful You show Yourself faithful, to the blameless You show Yourself blameless;