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Quotations about virtue

Aldous HuxleyJehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.

 - Aldous Huxley

Tags:   God  religion  virtue  

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.

 - Henry George

Tags:   aggression  government  liberty  repression  rights  virtue  

Oscar WildeDisobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

 - Oscar Wilde

Tags:   disobedience  rebellion  virtue  

William HazlittLet a man's talents or virtues be what they may, we feel satisfaction in his society only as he is satisfied in himself. We cannot enjoy the good qualities of a friend if he seems to be none the better for them.

 - William Hazlitt

Tags:   Self-worth  talent  virtue  

Samuel Taylor ColeridgePleasure, most often delusive, may be born of delusion. Pleasure, herself a sorceress, may pitch her tents on enchanted ground. But happiness (or, to use a more accurate and comprehensive term, solid well-being) can be built on virtue alone, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.

 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Tags:   delusion  happiness  pleasure  virtue  

AristotleLet us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.

 - Aristotle

Tags:   happiness  virtue  wisdom  

platoWisdom alone is the true and unalloyed coin for which we ought to exchange all things, for this and with this everything is bought and sold--fortitude, temperance, and justice; in a word, true virtue subsists with wisdom.

 - Plato

Tags:   exchange  justice  temperance  virtue  wisdom  

AristotleThe good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties In conformity with excellence or virtue . . . Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; arid similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.

 - Aristotle

Tags:   excellence  happiness  lifetime  virtue  

ConfuciusA ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it.

 - Confucius

Tags:   influence  leadership  virtue  

ConfuciusIt is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.

 - Confucius

Tags:   notoriety  ruin  virtue  

Marcus AureliusThe happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

 - Marcus Aurelius

Tags:   happiness  thought  virtue  

David HumeRiches are valuable at all times, and to all men, because they always purchase pleasures such as men are accustomed to and desire; nor can anything restrain or regulate the love of money but a sense of honor and virtue, which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.

 - David Hume

Tags:   money  virtue  wealth  

David HumeVanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.

 - David Hume

Tags:   pride  vanity  virtue  

Horace He who is always in a hurry to be wealthy and immersed in the study of augmenting his fortune has lost the arms of reason and deserted the post of virtue.

 - Horace

Tags:   reason  virtue  wealth  

Michel de MontaigneConfidence in another man's virtue is no slight evidence of a man's own.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   trust  virtue  

Michel de MontaigneThe height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   conduct  virtue  

Blaise PascalThe virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.

 - Blaise Pascal

Tags:   actions  conduct  virtue  

Michel de MontaigneThe virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   grandeur  mediocrity  soul  virtue