Quotes about Virtue

Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.

We become just by performing just actions temperate by performing temperate actions brave by performing brave actions.

A good heart will help you to a bonny face my lad ... and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.

True liberty is not the power to live as we please, but to live as we ought.

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

The virtue of its Citizens is the only Support of a Republican government.

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar…. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

The difference between a good man and a bad man is the choice of cause.

Christians find in God a source of moral strength that helps us to lead better lives than those we would have led without Him, still it would be arrogant and ignorant to claim that unbelievers don't often lead good moral lives—in fact, sometimes lives that put ours to shame.