Inspirational Quotes on Virtue

“And this is being just and holy with wisdom; for the Divinity needs nothing and suffers nothing; whence it is not, strictly speaking, capable of self-restraint, for it is never subjected to perturbation, over which to exercise control; while our nature, being capable of perturbation, needs self-constraint, by which disciplining itself to the need of little, it endeavours to approximate in character to the divine nature.”

“To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.”

“The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we to our passions, that we suffer more to insure perdition than salvation.”

“We are apt to mistake our vocation in looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and stepping over the ordinary ones which lie directly in the road before us.”

“All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.”

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.”

“Consider how impossible nobility of character would be if our goodness were untried innocence instead of victorious virtue.”

“Even to earnest minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved extreme. Philosophically, one scarcely sees either the necessity or the possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply grow better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand.”

“Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.”

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”

“Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.”

“Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.”

“When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayer should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man. Look not, therefore, upon your prayers as a method of good and salvation only, but as a perpetual monition of duty. By what we require of God we see what he requires of us.”

“Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.”

“Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility as the fringes are to a garment.”

“Temperance is reason's girdle, and passion's bride, the strength of the soul, and the foundation of virtue.”

“I get amazed, I can't look at it but about 10 seconds, at these politicians dancing around this, dancing around this, I'm trying to find a correct name for it, this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men.”

“Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.”

“Patience is the queen of virtues.”

“It is a shame for a man to desire honor only because of his noble progenitors, and not to deserve it by his own virtue.”