Virtue Quotes - Page 6

My priority is not about grades. I seek yearn for knowledge, skills and wisdom.

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.

Inner beauty magnifies outer beauty.

In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue - it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection.

When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.

Integrity is never a given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time.

Since childhood at my mother's knee, I have believed in honor, ethics and right living as its own reward. I find a very small minority who agree with me on that premise.

The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence.

Recommend to your children virtue that alone can make them happy not gold.

You become greater than what you conquer within.

Love treats its enemies better than hate treats its friends.

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?

Gratitude becomes spiritual, a spiritual virtue and a spiritual emotion, when we are moved in our response by a God-centered view of the three: gift, recipient, and giver. – p. 56

Be like the sun; warm to everyone, even your enemies.

To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.

For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.

Falsehood of a good man is better than truth of a bad one.

Kindness expressed to a stranger is kindness expressed to God.

If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God's sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another's burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity -- adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

In the common degree of the moral, there is no virtue. Virtue is excellence.

Your inner light lights up your outer world.

Virtue is like a rich stone best plain set.

I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who possessed extreme courage and extreme kindness. We show greatness not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.

Justine's virtue, in action, is the liberal lie in action, a good heart and an inadequate methodology.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

Among wise men there is no place at all left for hatred. For no one except the greatest of fools would hate good men. And there is no reason at all for hating the bad. For just as weakness is a disease of the body, so wickedness is a disease of the mind. And if this is so, since we think of people who are sick in body as deserving sympathy rather than hatred, much more so do they deserve pity rather than blame who suffer an evil more severe than any physical illness.

Bodily passion, which has been so unjustly decried, compels its victims to display every vestige that is in them of unselfishness and generosity, and so effectively that they shine resplendent in the eyes of all beholders.

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.

If the heart had a brain kind people would rule the world.

A loving mother makes sacrifices for peace and laughter to reign in her home and family.

...I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of 'Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

We cannot understand the Higher Wisdom. Later, well after the event, we may see the lesson contained in the event, and be truly grateful. We must, however, submit to what happens, accepting all that unfolds gracefully. This is the key. All your tragedies in life and in the theatre come about because of non-acceptance of the will of the Gods. Not my petty little ant-like will, but the Gods omnipotent will, let that will be done, I say. This is the beginning and end of the virtuous life.

I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

Truth is straight like a line. Virtue is firm like a wall. Wisdom is tall like a mountain. Love is wide like an ocean.

Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it’s a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.

Darkness is a prison from which only light escapes.

Believe and be so strong in virtues like character, instead of looking for miracles.

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.

Humility is a virtue and it is a virtue innate in guests.

Examine the lives of the best and more fruitful men and peoples, and ask yourselves whether a tree, if it is to grow proudly into the sky, can do without bad weather and storms: whether unkindness and opposition from without, whether some sort of hatred, envy, obstinacy, mistrust, severity, greed and violence do not belong to the favouring circumstances without which a great increase even in virtue is hardly possible. The poison which destroys the weaker nature strengthens the stronger – and he does not call it poison, either.

By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

Nature attunes children to receive the coded messages that parents issue how to live a joyful and virtuous life.

It takes courage to dream, to face our futures and the limiting forces within us. It takes courage to be determined that, as we slow down physically, we are going to grow even more psychologically and spiritually. Courage, the philosopher Aristotle taught us, is the most important of all the virtues, because without it we can’t practice any of the others. Courage is the nearest star that can guide our growth. Maya Angelou said we must be courageous about facing and exploring our personal histories. We must find the courage to care and to create internally, as well as externally, and as she said, we need the courage “to create ourselves daily as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings.

Light cannot enter a dark room without illumining it.

Love your friends with your eyes closed, but love your enemies with both eyes open.

The world is a busy place filled with many busy businesses, both the Godly and the ungodly. It means before you go on to accept any activity or event that comes into the world, you must weigh its Values, examine the Virtues, listen to Views and then you give your Verdict. Satan is not wise; he is just crafty!

In monarchies, each man's desire to do what was right in his own eyes could be restrained by beer, or force, by patronage, or by honor, and by professional standing armies. By contrast, republics had to hold themselves together from the bottom up, ultimately.

Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that?

In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the external world that is independent of us determines good and bad fortune, so inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ourselves proceeds from the will. But later it was asked whether we should attribute the names *bonum et malum* to the two former or to the two latter. This was really arbitrary and a matter of choice, and made no difference. But yet the Stoics argued incessantly about this with the Peripatetics and Epicureans, and amused themselves with the inadmissible comparison of two wholly incommensurable quantities and with the contrary and paradoxical judgements arising therefrom, which they cast on one another. An interesting collection of these is afforded us from the Stoic side by the *Paradoxa* of Cicero."—from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, pp. 88-89

A virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

Motherhood is a blissful chain...I have a mother - my precious gift...I am a mother - the best of my kind!

Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.

And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others.

Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.

If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue.

She looks very virtuous and very melancholy.""Virtue is like the precious odors, most fragrant when it is crushed.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. 'Faking it' in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail.