Quotes about Virtue

We need to set our affections on one good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.

You can talk about right and wrong and good and bad all day long, but ultimately people need to see it. Seeing and studying the actual lives of people is simply the best way to communicate ideas about how to behave and how not to behave. We need heroes and role models.

the Golden Triangle of Freedom is, when reduced to its most basic form, that freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith requires freedom.

As nations become corrupt and vicious," he says, "they have more need of masters." The root of the word "vicious" is "vice"—the word simply means "full of vice." So Franklin, without feeling the need to explain himself much, is bluntly saying that "freedom requires virtue." And that less virtue inevitably begets less freedom.

The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.

Tocqueville put it as bluntly as Franklin or Adams had, writing: "Liberty cannot be established without morality.

They understood that freedom was not merely the freedom to be left alone; it was the freedom to do what was right.

Honor is like a match, you can only use it once.

All you should try to do is behave with honour. If you can. At all times.

How goodness heightens beauty!

He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint.