Virtues Quotes

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

No one of this nation ever begs, for the houses of all are common to all; and they consider liberality and hospitality amongst the first virtues.

You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, which rests wholly upon yourself.

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.

There may be a hundred thousand men in an army, who are all equally free; but they only are naturally most fit to be commanders or leaders, who most excel in the virtues required for the right performance of those offices.

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.

In this era in which we live, the old-fashioned virtues grow increasingly unpopular.

The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

I neither drink nor smoke, because my schoolmaster impressed upon me three cardinal virtues; cleanliness in person, cleanliness in mind; temperance.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

General McChrystal had to go. Whatever his virtues as a strategist and commander, the 'Rolling Stone' interview fatally compromised his ability to represent the United States in dealing with allies and to act within the circle of people who must make decisions in Afghanistan.

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.