Quotes about Virtue
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.
— Harry S. Truman
There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
— Henry David Thoreau
What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
— Henry David Thoreau
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
— Henry David Thoreau
Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.
— Henry Ward Beecher
No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men.
— Herbert Hoover
Nothing can lift the heart of man like manhood in a fellow man.
— Herman Melville
So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
— JC Ryle
If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?
— John Adams
Wealth and honours, which most men pursue, easily change masters; they desert to the side which excels in virtue, industry, and endurance of toil, and they abandon the slothful.
— John Milton