What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
The Western world needs to ally themselves against the evil that is political Islam. To unite with its practitioners would be to unite with evil. Anyone who sees that as a virtue is simply enabling evil and, by proxy, is evil themselves.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others.
In my own case, who have spent my whole life in the practice of virtue, right conduct from habitual has become natural.
Conservatives are often fond of La Rochefoucauld’s famous aphorism that ‘Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,’ and so tend to downplay hypocrisy as a sin. But in the marketplace of ideas they champion, hypocrisy may yet turn out to be the deadliest – or costliest – of sins.
If you believe, as I do, that the scope and range of presidential authority is great, that puts a lot of weight on the civic virtue and decency of the individual who holds the office.
What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle – telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Reading – even browsing – an old book can yield sustenance denied by a database search. Patience is a virtue, gluttony a sin.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.
Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.
Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.
Every evil is a sickness of soul, but virtue offers the cause of its health.
Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do.
Elegance is inferior to virtue.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
You can’t have virtue without sin. What I’m after is having my characters’ virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That’s how you test people.
Tenderness is a virtue.
A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.
I’m an entertainer. I don’t go round saying I’m a paragon of virtue, so that is clearly not in the public interest.
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
By virtue of being a half Punjabi and half Sikh, tandoori chicken was my staple diet.
Good government is the outcome of private virtue.
I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.
No one benefits from us not taking credit for our successes. There is no virtue in allowing kudos to go unclaimed or elsewhere.
In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.
When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice.
Fidelity – a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
Because impudence is a vice, it does not follow that modesty is a virtue; it is built upon shame, a passion in our nature, and may be either good or bad according to the actions performed from that motive.
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of reflection.
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
I’m old enough to remember in the 1930s and the 1940s when thrift, frugality, was considered an important virtue.
Balance is key. Balance is a virtue. Balance is next to godliness, maybe. We should all aspire to better balance. Too much of what is said in this world is one-sided, and we need more balance – in our speech, in our music, in our art, in everything.
The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.
Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Love is bumping along together with the people in your life and making mistakes and trying to make them right by virtue of the fact that these are people you actually love; you care about them enough to muddle through it with them.
Believe me, ’tis a godlike thing to lend; to owe is a heroic virtue.
I could enjoy the life that I had by virtue of the educational attainment that my grandparents and parents had pursued. Education was always incredibly valued in our family.
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
Patience is a virtue; virtue is a grace.
There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.
I’m just an actor, but if the extra part of it is that I’m helping people or people are being helped by the virtue of what we’re doing, then that’s just a really nice added extra.
No one can be saved – in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved – in virtue of what God can do.
Cheapness is a great virtue.
Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.
Dali is like a man who hesitates between talent and genius, or, as one might once have said, between vice and virtue.
The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.
War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
The notion of our leaders as patrician ascetics of unassailable virtue is risible.
The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue.
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.
Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.
‘Character Doesn’t Count’ has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. ‘Virtue Doesn’t Matter’ might be another. But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump’s shortcomings prove it daily.
I’m really tired of virtue.
If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?
And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?
