86 Quotes About Virtue

If you plan to build a tall house of virtues, you must first lay deep foundations of humlilty.

Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

Virtue-even attempted virtue-brings light; indulgence brings fog.

Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues.

Men are not made religious by performing certain actions which are externally good, but they must first have righteous principles, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

Beauty without virtue is like a flower without fragrance.

What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross and in the power of his resurrection.

The most virtuous of all men, says Plato, is he that contents himself with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

These then are the marks of the ideal Church - love, suffering, holiness, sound doctrine, genuineness, evangelism and humility. They are what Christ desires to find in His churches as He walks among them.

Consider how impossible nobility of character would be if our goodness were untried innocence instead of victorious virtue.

Do not fear the conflict, and do not flee from it; where there is no struggle, there is no virtue.

I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy; hate cant; hate intolerance, oppression, injustice, Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them - with a deep, abiding, God-like hatred.

God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Sordid and infamous sensuality, the most dreadful evil that issued from the box of Pandora, corrupts the entire heart and eradicates every virtue.

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

Gratitude is the mother of all the virtues.

Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility as the fringes are to a garment.

Adulation is the death of virtue. Who flatters, is, of all mankind, the lowest, save he who courts the flattery.

We need to teach our kids that misconduct bears--or at least should bear--a cost. Our personal ethics should not be attached to who is affected by what we believe.

Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.

Throw away thy rod, throw away thy wrath; O my God, take the gentle path.

Even to earnest minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved extreme. Philosophically, one scarcely sees either the necessity or the possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply grow better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand.

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.

God never approves sexual union outside of marriage.

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.

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.

We are looking for our own virtue, our own piety, our own goodness, and so live on and in our own poverty and weakness - today pleased and comforted with the seeming firmness and strength of our own pious tempers and fancying ourselves to be somewhat. Tomorrow, fallen into our own mire, we are dejected, but not humbled; we grieve, but it is only the grief of pride at the seeing our perfection not to be such as we had vainly imagined. And thus it will be, till the whole turn of our minds be so changed that we as fully see and know our inability to have any goodness of our own as to have a life of our own.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed, so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.

Being virtuous is no feat once temptation ceases.

If we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayer should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a method of good and salvation only, but as a perpetual monition of duty. By what we require of God we see what he requires of us.

The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.

Judge of thine improvement, not by what thou speakest or writest, but by the firmness of thy mind, and the government of thy passions and affections.