Virtue is the truest nobility.
If you were to ask me when I was 17 if I was mad because I didn’t have a deal, I would have probably said, ‘Yeah.’ Now I’m so glad I got it when I got it. People tell you to be patient and wait. Patience is not a virtue of mine, but I think everything definitely happened the right way for me.
What a liberating thing to realize that our problems are probably our richest sources for rising to the ultimate virtue of compassion.
Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
I’d like to know what law is it that says that a woman is a better parent, simply by virtue of her sex.
Many people think that Puerto Rico would be a Democratic state just by virtue of the inclination of the Latino population in the United States, but the reality is that I see Puerto Rico as a battleground state.
So what I do now is to pre-empt that by making the up into a virtue, and telling funny stories about how crap I am before people have a chance to notice it for themselves and think maybe I haven’t realised.
Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness.
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person’s name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
I’ve always been a sucker for any technology engineered primarily for the entertainment of the human race – even such technology as has been disguised as ‘useful’ or ‘improving’ when we all know the real virtue lies in its ability to distract and divert.
The war was a mirror; it reflected man’s every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity.
Impeachment isn’t a tool that should be used to virtue signal.
What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good.
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
The virtue of binary is that it’s the simplest possible way of representing numbers. Anything else is more complicated. You can catch errors with it, it’s unambiguous in its reading, there are lots of good things about binary. So it is very, very simple once you learn how to read it.
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there’s more news that’s falling into books.
I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn’t make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case.
In such a state, humility is the virtue of men, and their only defense; to walk humbly with God, never doubting, whatever befall, that His will is good, and that His law is right.
My failure to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles is the direct result of my refusal to die to my natural proclivity toward attaining my own freedom, meaning, value, worth, and righteousness – not believing that, by virtue of my Spirit – wrought union with Christ, everything I need, I already possess.
The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.
Mankind is not special by virtue of our address in the universe, or what spins around us, or because life originated here. Slowly, but surely, we’ve been compelled to renounce the comfort of these beliefs.
Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.
Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.
We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
Somebody might say that they always wanted to be a fly-fishing guide in Montana and maybe they’ll never get to do that but just by the virtue of having said it out loud, I think there’s some power in that.
In this country, most people feel that being successful in their business is a virtue, not a vice, and once we begin to identify it as a vice, this country is going down.
A republican government can only be supported by virtue; and the end of all our legislation should be to encourage our fellow citizens in its daily practice.
Renown is something people have always wanted, but maybe what’s modern is that it’s considered a virtue, this desire, rather than a vice. I might be wrong about this.
Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
The most important virtue in politics was once thought to be likeability. But in Corbyn, dislikeable was king. Actually, dislikeability reached its apotheosis in Donald Trump, who exhibited sourness, truculence and negativity in every step and tweet.
Competition is such a virtue, and everybody’s so busy competing, they have no time for compassion.
Every faculty and virtue I possess can be used as an instrument with which to worry myself.
I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade – or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere.
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.
Virtue by premeditation isn’t worth much.
It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice: for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin?
The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis.
There is no sanctuary of virtue like home.
True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
If you are a politician who styles yourself as a model of family virtue but are having a secret affair, you have no right to expect it to remain secret.
The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice.
No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
Once elected, the Pope is by virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error. God would change any spend thrift politician into a responsible Pope.
Obedience is a strong virtue, capable of making me master of my emotions by giving me more strength to conquer my pride as I submit to those above me out of respect for their God-given authority and those below me out of love.
Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.
Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue.
Women are degraded by the propensity to enjoy the present moment, and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.
It is safest to be moderately base – to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.
He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.
Prestige podcasts, like prestige television shows, tend to have an audience that believes itself literate, well-informed, and reasonable. Listening to podcasts, in this model, is a form of virtue.
