Quotes about Virtue

We all must try to be good.

You are mysterious. I love you. You're beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that's the rarest known combination.

Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.

It's the whole thing,' he asserted. 'It's the one dividing line between good and evil. I've never met a man who led a rotten life and didn't have a weak will.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Wickedness never did, never does, never will bring us happiness.

Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue.

Holy charity confounds all diabolical and fleshly temptations and all fleshly fears.

The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue.

There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. Now, that's a simple enough formulation, but it's an insight found not only in the writings of Founding Fathers like Washington or great political thinkers like Edmund Burke; it is also found in a great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition.