Virtue Quotes
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There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.
George Washington
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By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy-indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.
William Osler
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Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair
Richard John Neuhaus
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There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life's circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehemently – without his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love.
Marcel Proust
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Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
Seneca the Younger
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In society one needs a flexible virtue; too much goodness can be blamable.
Moliere
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Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
Honore de Balzac
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Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel
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Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.
Seneca the Younger
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For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself.
Alexander Nehamas
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Let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.
Plato
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The true end of education is not only to make the young learned, but to make them love learning; not only to make them industrious, but to make them love industry; not only to make them virtuous, but to make them love virtue; not only to make them just, but to make them hunger and thirst after justice.
Marcel Proust
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I find myself feeling like Oscar in 'Sweat' just by virtue of cleaning the tables, wiping the bar down and picking up everybody's glasses - and not making eye contact, because that's the character. These are working-class, blue-collar people. These are the people I grew up with. It gets under your skin.
Carlo Alban
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We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, the ethical policy taught in the books and schools, and the success policy.
William Graham Sumner
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Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
Ezra Pound
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There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.
George Holyoake
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The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
Blaise Pascal
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So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
Charles Dickens