quotations about virtue
We look around us ... we find that we exist, we find ourselves reasoning upon the mystery which involves our being ... we see virtue and vice, we see the light and darkness, each is separate, distinct; the line which divides them is glaringly perceptible; yet how racking it is to the soul, when enquiring into its own operations, to find that perfect virtue is very far from attainable, to find reason tainted by feeling, to see the mind when analysed exhibit a picture of irreconcilable inconsistencies, even when perhaps a moment before, it imagined that it had grasped the fleeting Phantom of virtue.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, June 20, 1811
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
Many a man gets a big reputation for Virtue and Morality, when if the truth were known, the poor boob was simply scared of getting caught.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Great Gatsby
The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
There is no real felicity for man, but in reforming all his errors and vices, and entering upon a strict and constant course of Virtue.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Virtue is not always amiable.
JOHN ADAMS
diary, February 9, 1779
In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
And as we perceive that virtue assumes a multitude of diverse forms, this variety discovered in intelligent beings convinces us that the most perfect Being is He who unites in Himself the greatest number, or the sum total, of all these perfections.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
To struggle for virtue, is to be virtuous.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Virtue!--to be good and just--
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Vision of Sin
Most virtues lie between two vices.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist