Quotes about Virtue

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

How beautiful is death, when earned by virtue! 80 Who would not be that youth? what pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country!8 —Why sits this sadness on your brows, my friends? I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood Secure, and flourished in a civil war. 85 —Portius, behold thy brother, and remember Thy life is not thy own, when Rome demands it.

Here will I hold. If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud Thro' all her works), He must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Her instinct was always to act out of kindness and generosity instead of self-interest. She was a better person than me, and I was a better person when I was around her.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

One of the first things that strikes us about the men and women in Scripture is that they were disappointingly non- heroic. We do not find splendid moral examples. We do not find impeccably virtuous models. That always comes as a shock to newcomers to Scripture: Abraham lied; Jacob cheated; Moses murdered and complained; David committed adultery; Peter blasphemed.

The congregation is the pastor's place for developing vocational holiness. It goes without saying that it is the place of ministry: we preach the word and administer the sacraments, we give pastoral care and administer the community life, we teach and we give spiritual direction. But it is also the place in which we develop virtue, learn to love, advance in hope — become what we preach.

Pride first, then the crash, but humility is precursor to honor.

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

Jesus said "Follow me" and ended up with a lot of losers. And these losers ended up, through no virtue or talent of their own, becoming saints. Jesus wasn't after the best but the worst.