# Virtue

Virtue (Latin: virtus, Ancient Greek: ἀρετή "arete") is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards: doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers · See also · External links

## A

* Virtue is the mistress of all things. Virtue is the master of all things.
** John Adams, Journal entry (6 August 1796).
* Virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition.
** Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.
* Virtue is the health of the soul.
** Ariston of Chios, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, fragment 359.
* If the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them. ... He must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and ... his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.
** Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105a28
* Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean ... it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
** Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC), Book II, Ch. 6.
* Virtue ... is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.
** Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1107a, as translated by W. D. Ross, in The Basic Works of Aristotle (1941), p. 959.
* If he [Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue.
** Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony of Egypt § 3 Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 131-144
* He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all.
** Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of Anthony of Egypt § 4

## B

* When Heracles was quite a young man and was nearly of the age at which you yourselves are now, while he was deliberating which of the two roads he should take, the one leading through toils to virtue, or the easiest, two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice. Now at once, although they were silent, the difference between them was evident from their appearance. For the one had been decked out for beauty through the art of toiletry, and was overflowing with voluptuousness, and she was leading a whole swarm of pleasures in her train; now these things she displayed, and promising still more than these she tried to draw Heracles to her. But the other was withered and squalid, and had an intense look, and spoke quite differently; for she promised nothing dissolute or pleasant, but countless sweating toils and labours and dangers through every land and sea. But the prize to be won by these was to become a god, as the narrative of Prodicus expressed it; and it was this second woman that Heracles in the end followed.
** Basil of Caesarea, On Greek Literature, Loeb Classical Library, volume 270, p. 399
* He whose mind is satisfied with virtue that has been achieved, Who never thinks to stir himself And take a meditation subject up, Contented with mere virtuousness, Nor striving for a higher state— His virtue bears the appellation Of that partaking of stagnation.
   * Buddhaghoṣa, The Path of Purification, 1:39, p. 18
* Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with vice combin'd.
** Lord Byron, “To E,” Poetical Works, Volume 1

## C

* Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
** Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, Life in Edwardian England (1969).
* O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.
** Cicero, Tusc. Quæst, Book V. 2. 5. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97.
* A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.
** John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 CabaM and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.
* Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.
** John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), 1 Cababd and Ellis's Q. B. D. Rep. 145; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 244.
* To be able to practise five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue ... gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
** Confucius, Analects, fifth century B.C.
* To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure.
** Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, Fourth Selection (1987).
* Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
** Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) in the film, Sleepy Hollow (1999).

## D

* Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.
** Diogenes of Sinope Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88
* How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.
** W. E. B. Du Bois, The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), p. 275

## E

* Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
** Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 59
* We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,—not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue’s other and more precise name.
** John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), pp. 26-27

## F

* That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right.
** James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (1907), p. 19
* The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he a void becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes.
** Frederick II of Prussia, Anti-Machiavel Chapter VIII

## G

* Only Virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
** Baltasar Gracián. In Maxim 300, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647).

## H

* The ideal incentives to virtuous energy are a sort of moon to the moral world. Their borrowed light is but a dimmer substitute for the life-giving rays of religion.
** Augustus William Hare, in Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare, Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871), p. 11.
* A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an ‘is’; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i.e., a loving disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command, because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command.
** G. W. F. Hegel, "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate"
* Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis.
** He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
** Horace, Epistles. Bk. i, epis. 2. l.

## J

* "I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it was very tiresome." "Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is never tiresome." Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye. "What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!"
** Henry James, in Confidence (1879), Ch. VI. The speakers are Angela Vivian and Bernard Longueville.
* The appetites weaken a person's virtue because they are like shoots burgeoning about a tree, sapping its strength, and causing it to be fruitless.
** John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (ICS Publications: 1991), Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 2
* Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Virtue is doing it.
** David Starr Jordan, "Ideals of Stanford", quoted in The Land of Sunshine: A Southern California Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Los Angeles, June 1898), p. 11.

## K

* Some of the most virtuous men are murderers by the fact that they stick to their own principles. Hitler was a virtuous man in the context of his own principles. He initiated a pretty dirty hour as far as humanity was concerned, but the idea is that he did it for his own reasons. They were mad reasons, but he felt that he was sticking to his principles. So even an insane man may have an insane code of ethics.
** Jack Kirby, "Jack Kirby interview", Train of Thought #5, (1971).

## L

* Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
** John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) Sec. 70.
* To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
** John Locke, Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703)

## M

* Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
** Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), p. 149.
* A virtuous youth and frugal manhood always create a Pisgah for the veteran in righteousness, from which he may calmly survey the stars, and read his " title clear to mansions in the skies," while yet in the flesh he can soar on the wings of meditation above the clouds, and catch glimpses of the heavenly world that lies in the placid and everlasting orient before him.
** Elias Lyman Magoon, Proverbs for the People (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1849), Ch. 5, pp. 71–72.
* Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.
** Horace Mann, Thoughts (1867).
* Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affection of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent.
** Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).
* Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide,— In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too near that comes to be denied.
** Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), The Lady’s Resolve (1713).
* Virtue is not a chemical product, as Taine once described it: it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. That, I submit, is what has happened in our own lifetime.
** Lewis Mumford, Values for Survival (1946)

## N

* Between two vices, virtue does not always dwell, but often, but all too often only weakness and lame impotence.
** Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “David Strauss,” § 1.11, cited in W. Kauffman, Nietzsche, p. 136.

## P

* Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes.
** William Paley Natural Theology Ch. 26 : The Goodness of the Deity.
* Aristotle and the other classics observed that democracy was constantly prone to overestimate those virtues (manly courage, patriotism, piety) that were within the reach of the poor majority, while neglecting those virtues or excellences requiring unusual capacity, education, leisure, and broad political experience.
** Thomas L. Pangle, Introduction to The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: 1989), p. xix.
* We can never enter upon the path to virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion.
** Letter to Demetrias by Pelagius as translated by B. Rees, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 206-210
* What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions?
** Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 68.
* Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness.
** Philo, Every Good Man is Free, 69.
* Virtue itself does not have the same characteristics for all; we see good and evil change according to opinions and usages.
** Plethon, née Georgios Gemistos, Book of Laws, Book 1, Chapter 1, as translated by John Opsopaus, Ph.D.
* Why do we assert that virtue is unteachable, and thus make it non-existent?
** Plutarch, “Can virtue be taught”, Moralia, W. Helmbold, trans. (1939), vol. 6

## Q

* God commands (people) to maintain justice, kindness, and proper relations with their relatives. He forbids them to commit indecency, sin, and rebellion.
** Quran, 16:90

## R

* Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompts them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue.
** François Rabelais, Gargantua, Chapter 57
* As the saints and prophets were often forced to practise long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them and their visions would appear, so Virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long continued culture of the mind. Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. … To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.
** William Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872), p. 540.

## S

* People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.
** Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 414.
* The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
** Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Vol. II, Ch. 28
* Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
** Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Book 3, lines 176-180
* Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces.
** Virtue is indeed its own noblest reward.
*** Silius Italicus, Punica, Book XIII, line 663
* In the memory of virtue is immortality,
    because it is known both by God and by mortals.
    When it is present, people imitate it,
    and they long for it when it has gone;
    throughout all time it marches, crowned in triumph.
   * Wisdom of Solomon 4:1-2 NRSV
* Unde clare intelligimus, quantum illi a vera virtutis aestimatione aberrant, qui pro virtute et optimis actionibus, tanquam pro summa servitute, summis praemiis a Deo decorari exspectant, quasi ipsa virtus Deique servitus non esset ipsa felicitas et summa libertas.
** We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direst slavery; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom.
*** Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, Part 2, Prop. 49, Scholium (Dover 1955 p. 126)

## T

* The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.
** Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) Ethics, p. 65.
* 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.
** Elizabeth Taylor, as quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23.
* Virtue cannot be separated into male and female. ... The difference is one of bodies not of souls.
** Theodoret as cited in The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (2012), p. 106.
* I wanted to damage every man in the place, and every woman--and not in their bodies or in their estate, but in their vanity — the place where feeble and foolish people are most vulnerable. So I disguised myself and came back and studied you. You were easy game. You had an old and lofty reputation for honesty, and naturally you were proud of it — it was your treasure of treasures, the very apple of your eye. As soon as I found out that you carefully and vigilantly kept yourselves and your children out of temptation, I knew how to proceed. Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.
** Mark Twain, "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg", ch. III, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900).
* Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
** Nikola Tesla, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy, with Special Reference to Harvesting the Sun's Energy", Century Illustrated Magazine (June 1900)

## V

* La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d’un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n’en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé.
** Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
*** Voltaire, "Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry," Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771).

## W

* A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce a persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is in vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account—the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it, and we must, in a great measure, ch⟨ange⟩ the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. ⟨No⟩ institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these ma⟨xims,⟩ can succeed.
** George Washington to a Continental Congress Camp Committee, 29 January 1778

## Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

    Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert's Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).
* Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
** James Waddel Alexander, p. 611.
* We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.
** Henry Ward Beecher, p. 611.
* Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.
** Isaac Barrow, p. 612.
* No state of virtue is complete, however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and even bitter experience.
** Horace Bushnell, p. 612.
* What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.
** Frederick William Robertson, p. 612.

## External links

Virtues Altruism • Asceticism • Beneficence • Benevolence • Bravery • Carefulness • Charity • Cheerfulness • Cleanliness • Common sense • Compassion • Constancy • Courage • Dignity • Diligence • Discretion • Earnestness • Faith • Fidelity • Forethought • Forgiveness • Friendship • Frugality • Gentleness • Goodness • Grace • Gratitude • Holiness • Honesty • Honor • Hope • Hospitality • Humanity • Humility • Integrity • Intelligence • Justice • Kindness • Love • Loyalty • Mercy • Moderation • Modesty • Optimism • Patience • Philanthropy • Piety • Prudence • Punctuality • Poverty • Purity • Self-control • Simplicity • Sincerity • Sobriety • Sympathy • Temperance • Tolerance
Vices Aggression • Anger • Apathy • Arrogance • Bigotry • Contempt • Cowardice • Cruelty • Dishonesty • Drunkenness • Egotism • Envy • Evil speaking • Gluttony • Greed • Hatred • Hypocrisy • Idleness • Ignorance • Impatience • Impenitence • Ingratitude • Inhumanity • Intemperance • Jealousy • Laziness • Lust • Malice • Neglect • Obstinacy • Philistinism • Prejudice • Pretension • Pride • Recklessness • Self-righteousness • Selfishness • Superficiality • Tryphé • Unkindness • Usury • Vanity • Worldliness