Virtue Quotes
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Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth; the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. . . . Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.
William Shakespeare
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All the big words -virtue, justice, truth, ...- are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness
Stephen Fry
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But virtue never will be mov'd,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven.
William Shakespeare
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Death--some form of termination--is the universal ending of all living things; but only man, by virtue of his verbally reportable introspective life, can conceptualize his own cessation.
Edwin S. Shneidman
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All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.
Plato
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Lowliness is the base of every virtue, And he who goes the lowest builds the safest.
Philip James Bailey
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Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars
That make ambition virtue.
William Shakespeare
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I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty.
Confucius
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Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.
Seneca the Younger
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We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
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The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.
William Shakespeare
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Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor -
Both thanks and use.
William Shakespeare
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Venerable to me is the hard hand,--crooked, coarse,--wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.
Thomas Carlyle
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Where envy reigns virtue can't exist, and generosity doesn't go with meanness.
Miguel de Cervantes
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After all, the supreme virtue in all art is soul, perhaps it is the only thing which gives art a right to be.
Willa Cather
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He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue.
Victor Hugo
