c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Virtue - to be good and just -Every heart, when sifted well,Is a clot of warmer dust,Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.- The Vision of Sin
— Alfred Tennyson
You're perfectly safe. Emily is here to protect your virtue." "That's too bad.
— Kady Cross, The Girl in the Steel Corset
Mischiefs feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.
— Ben Jonson, Volpone; Or, the Fox
When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish. I reflected a little sadly that this was only too true and hoped I did not appear too much that kind of person to others. Virtue is an excellent thing and we should all strive after it, but it can sometimes be a little depressing.
— Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
We are all each of us riddles, when unknown one to the other. The plain map of human powers and purposes, helps us not at all to thread the labyrinth each individual presents in his involution of feelings, desires and capacities; and we must resemble, in quickness of feeling, instinctive sympathy, and warm benevolence, the lovely daughter of Huntley, before we can hope to judge rightly of the good and virtuous of our fellow-creatures.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil's will is coerced. Instead a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination.
— Vigen Guroian, Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination
Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues, / That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; / The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, / Is made worth heaven!
— Ben Jonson, Volpone; Or, the Fox
I have observed that gentlemen suppose that the general legislature will do every thing mischievous they possibly can, and that they will omit to do every thing good which they are authorized to do. If this were a reasonable supposition, their objections would be good. I consider it reasonable to conclude that they will as readily do their duty as deviate from it; nor do I go on the grounds mentioned by gentlemen on the other side — that we are to place unlimited confidence in them, and expect nothing but the most exalted integrity and sublime virtue. But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)
— James Madison
The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.
— Thomas Jefferson
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
— Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks
Cling to the One who clings to nothing;And so clinging, cease to cling.
— Thiruvalluvar, Kural
Folded hands may conceal a dagger --Likewise a foe's tears.
— Thiruvalluvar, Kural
The vast world rainless, one may bid adieuTo charity and penance.
— Thiruvalluvar, Kural
Conquer with forbearanceThe excesses of insolence.
— Thiruvalluvar, Kural
Virtue alone is happiness; all elseIs else, and without praise.
— Thiruvalluvar, Kural
Virtue has need of limits.
— Montesquieu
Remember in any case, that not only the Adept, but anyone with the smallest capacity for Adeptship, is fundamentally an Artist; he will certainly not possess any of those bourgeois "virtues" which are just so many reactions to Blue Funk.
— Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.
— Thomas Keneally, Searching for Schindler: A Memoir
Two distinctive traits especially identify beyond a doubt a strong and dominant character. One trait is contempt for external circumstances, when one is convinced that men ought to respect, to desire, and to pursue only what is moral and right, that men should be subject to nothing, not to another man, not to some disturbing passion, not to Fortune. The second trait, when your character has the disposition I outlined just now, is to perform the kind of services that are significant and most beneficial; but they should also be services that are a severe challenge, that are filled with ordeals, and that endanger not only your life but also the many comforts that make life attractive.Of these two traits, all the glory, magnificence, and the advantage, too, let us not forget, are in the second, while the drive and the discipline that make men great are in the former.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
...For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.
— H. Rider Haggard, She
A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes that men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple foundation of his own private vices. It would astound him to realize that they have actually, by their strange erratic path, avoided his vices as well as his virtues.
— G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America
What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.
— Abraham Lincoln
I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as they would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings
I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who possessed extreme courage and extreme kindness. We show greatness not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Small, therefore, can we think the progress we have made, as long as our admiration for those who have done noble things is barren, and does not of itself incite us to imitate them.
— Plutarch, Moralia
Every vice leads to cruelty. Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty. Most atrocities are stimulated by accounts of the enemy's atrocities; and pity for the oppressed classes, when separated from the moral law as a whole, leads by a very natural process to the unremitting brutalities of a reign of terror.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
For every virtuous man, there are ten thousand worshipers of virtue.
— Jeffrey Fry
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others.
— Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives, Vol 2
Our genuine happiness comes from doing things we feel good about, not from doing things that make us feel good.
— John Bruna, The Wisdom of a Meaningful Life: The Essence of Mindfulness
The liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction.
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Vol. 2
... We [can't] escape the influence of sin in the world, but [do] we have to pay money to see and hear it firsthand?
— Chris Heimerdinger, Gadiantons and the Silver Sword
Delayed gratification is a major virtue that is missing from our society.
— Sunday Adelaja
What virtue is it that is born with us?Much less can honor be ascribed thereto,Honor is purchased by the deeds we do.Believe me, Hero, honor is not won,Until some honorable deed be done.----From “Hero and Leander, Sestiad I
— Christopher Marlowe, Complete Poems and Translations
In any case, I hadn’t gone into the subject of dorm living too deeply with him, not because I hesitated to probe his tender spots but because I would have been probing my own. This is called tact, and is reputed to be a virtue.
— Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage
We often find that People who claim virtue are the ones to lack it the most.
— Charlyn Khater
On Perseverance – Persistence is admirable. Stubbornness is stupid. Just remember: the latter two even begin with the same three letters.
— Marsha Hinds
That Archangel, now, " Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled foot on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment after its death struggle with evil? No, no; I could have told Guido better. A full third of the Archangel's feathers should have been torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan's own! His sword should be streaming with blood, and perhaps broken half-way to the hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle! He should press his foot down upon the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
You want the world to be perfect, Nedril—and that's a noble goal. But the world isn't perfect. It's people like me who give the world the chance to try another day for virtue.
— Jennifer McKeithen, Atlantis On the Tides of Destiny
The Virtue and unpretentiousness of the wise man, which I am talking about, goes unnoticed because of its transparent ordinariness.
— Alan Jacobs, Socrates Without Tears
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
— Alexander Pope
O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.translation (non-literal):O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher of virtues and expeller of vices! Just a single day lived well and according to your lessons is to be preferred to an eternity of errors.— Cicero, As quoted in Ben Franklin’s Autobiography
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Virtues should not be seen as a medium to please others, else, they'll always fall short. They should, first, be a medium of self-edification.
— Ufuoma Apoki
The world goes this way and that. Ideas are in fashion or not, and those who should prevail are often defeated. But it doesn’t matter. The virtues remain uncorrupted and uncorruptible. They are rewards in themselves, the bulwarks with which we can protect our vision of beauty, and the strengths by which we may stand, unperturbed, in the storm that comes when seeking God.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
Those who wish their virtue to be advertised are not striving for virtue but for renown. Are you not willing to be just without being renowned? Nay, indeed you must often be just and be at the same time disgraced. And then, if you are wise, let ill repute, well won, be a delight. Farewell.
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
The piety, the gentleness, the honesty, the sensitivity, all the qualities she has learned to admire in herself, are invitations to violence; all her life, she has been groomed for the slaughterhouse. And though she is virtuous, she does not know how to do good.
— Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.
— Thomas Jefferson
Any woman of virtue won't be easy to come by. She will make you jump over hurdles to reach her.
— Shannon L. Alder
One is punished most for one’s virtues.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Justine's virtue, in action, is the liberal lie in action, a good heart and an inadequate methodology.
— Angela Carter
New York, I thought, was a city defined by its flaws. In every possible way, its virtues were overwhelmed by its vices, as Jekyll was by Hyde. Yet it was these very vices that gave the city its character - like tar in an oak barrel lending its flavor to Scotch.
— Miles Watson
No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.
— John Chrysostom
It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I think virtue is the quintessence of perfection, and the One who created it definitely stands beyond that value. Virtues like honesty, loyalty and courtesy, do not have to be completely defined by their relation to extrinsic things. Even if they are not realized by actions, their good value remains. Thus, it is not the end of virtue that I fear, but the end of me. What kind of person will I become without righteousness, for instance? I may not even be able to define myself.
— Aishah Madadiy
WoyzeckYes, Captain, virtue! That I haven't figured out yet. I'm just a poor guy. The likes of us are wretched in this world and the next. If we ever got to heaven, we'd have to help make the thunder.
— Georg Büchner, Woyzeck
Any virtue can be taken too far.
— Max Wirestone, The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss
If a nation succeeds in making her people strong in virtues, then the nation is rich already.
— Sunday Adelaja
People who don't like cats always seem to think there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.
— L.M. Montgomery
She would grace his home with her charm and beauty and she would make his bed joyous, all without ever having to shame his hearth with another man's memory of her shamelessness.
— Dorothy West, The Wedding
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
— John Milton, Milton's Comus
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than they sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
— John Milton, Milton's Comus
Such is the joy of concluding a day performing duties earnestly leaving ends upon His feet! I have nothing to gain here except virtues, nothing to lose except love, O Lord, I am here to breathe the beauty of life!
— Preeth Nambiar, The Solitary Shores
Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor.
— Jerome K. Jerome, The Angel and the Author
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
— Ayn Rand
I have pondered on the causes of a life's shipwreck. I think that our lives are worse than the mind's quality would warrant. There are many who know virtue. We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can't bring it to achievement.
— Euripides, Hippolytus
It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch's wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself—either an Emperor or an idiot.
— Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina
PRESCRIPTION A bitof virtuewill neverhurt you.
— Piet Hein
You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
It is not our religion, still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue; virtue must be practised. Therefore, let no one do to others what he would not have done to himself.
— Yagnavalkya
...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?
— Marquis de Sade, Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sade
The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.
— Blaise Pascal
Never sacrifice what’s right for what’s convenient.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
We understand and recognize what is good, but we do not labor to bring it to fulfillment, some of us out of laziness, some because we put something else, some pleasure, before virtue--and there are many pleasures in life, long conversations and indolence-that pleasing vice..
— Euripides
Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, "This thing called the Way - where does it exist?"Zhuangzi said, "There's no place it doesn't exist.""Come," said Master Dongguo, "you must be more specific!""It is in the ant.""As low a thing as that?""It is in the panic grass.""But that's lower still!""It is in the tiles and shards.""How can it be so low?""It is in the piss and shit!
— Zhuangzi
Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.
— Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.
— Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
The virtue of its Citizens is the only Support of a Republican government
— William Henry Harrison
Neeta showed us there can be as much virtue in the things we do not do as on those we do.
— Anne Fortier, The Lost Sisterhood
That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth
— Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space
They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.
— Geoffrey Wood
We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.
— Geoffrey Wood
What are your chief vices? And virtues? I have no vices. The concept doesn't exist in my vocabulary. My chief virtue is gratitude
— Truman Capote
No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.
— Murray N. Rothbard
To be moral, an act must be free.
— Murray N. Rothbard
Virtue in a woman is like pepper in the soup. A little makes for a nice seasoning. Butoverdo it, and no one wants very much of you.
— Lisa Kleypas, Married By Morning
You say that Caesar Borgia suffered the just punishment of his crimes. He was destroyed not by his misdeeds, but by circumstances over which he had no control. His wickedness was an irrelevant accident. In this world of sin and sorrow if virtue triumphs over vice it is not because it is virtuous, but because it has better and bigger guns; if honesty prevails over double-dealing, it is not because it is honest, but because it has a stronger army more ably led; and if good overcomes evil it is not because it is good, but because it has a well-lined purse. It is well to have right on our side, but it madness to forget that unless we have might as well it will avail us nothing. We must believe that God loves men of good will, but there is no evidence to show that He will save fools from the result of their folly.
— W. Somerset Maugham
To be strong and true had been the most important task he had set himself since early childhood.Once, as a boy, he had tried to outstare the sun. But before he could tell whether he had really looked at it or not, changes had occurred: the blazing red ball that had been there at first began to whirl, then suddenly dimmed, till it became a cold, bluish-black, flattened disk of iron. He felt he had seen the very essence of the sun.... For a while, wherever he looked he saw the sun's pale afterimage: in the undergrowth; in the shade beneath the trees; even, when he gazed up, in every part of the sky. The truth was something too dazzling to be looked at directly. And yet, once it had come into one's field of vision, one saw patches of light in all kinds of places: the afterimages of virtue.
— Yukio Mishima, Acts of Worship: Seven Stories
Everything we do in life reflects through the virtues of a nation. For example if a nation is ruled through Fear, the Manifestation of War rises; If a nation is ruled through Love, War would not exist and Harmony would find its way.
— Nynke Visser
There is a virtue, I must presume, in shamelessness, since by placing on parade the things one does not know, one discovers that no one else knows either.
— Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations
The German deli was run by a distant cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Great Neck Jews loved the place; they flocked to Kuch's. They said to one another, What a character he is, Otto, strictly old country, I'm telling you. Gus didn't think that Negroes would rush to shop in a store run by some retired slave owner, eager to share memories of fun times on the plantation, praising Massa's old-fashioned Mississippi charm. Jews were still chasing that absurd, wishful feather. Eventually, Jews would become like everybody else. They'd elevate small grievances; they'd cherish hurt feelings and ill treatment like they were signs of virtue.
— Amy Bloom
What we're fighting against isn't an out-and-out vice. It's an overgrown, perverted virtue.
— Jared Taylor
Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity.
— Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815
But I was born in the image of God, a man, a creator, with power of life and death, a father, blessed with the gift of the seed of Adam, a sower of seed, to bring forth generations of new life.This I was, and envying a kettle.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
If we can spend more time uprooting vices and rooting virtues, our world will be safer and better.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
The beauty and music...It is a call...And some are not strong.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
Her mind, shaped so long before my own, was for me the equivalent of what had been offered me by the behaviour of the girls of the little gang along the sea-shore. Mme de Guermantes offered me, tamed and subdued by good manners, by respect for intellectual values, the energy and charm of a cruel little girl from one of the noble families around Combray, who from her childhood had ridden horses, sadistically tormented cats, gouged out the eyes of rabbits, and, while remaining a paragon of virtue, might equally well have been, some years back now, and so much did she share his dashing style, the most glamorous mistress of the Prince de Sagan.
— Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.Francois de La Rochefoucauld
— Gabriela Popa
Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
A lie told in the service of truth is virtue.
— Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife
From the days of old, those who walk in the way have replaced those who deviate therefrom; those who lack virtue have fallen before those who possess it. Can one escape fate?
— Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms: Classic Novel in Four Volumes
Pacifism is a virtue indistinguishable from cowardice.
— Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife
When your heart flows broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue.When you are above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, like a lover's will: there is the origin of your virtue.When you despise the agreeable and the soft bed and cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is the origin of your virtue.When you will with a single will and you call this cessation of all need "necessity": there is the origin of your virtue.Verily, a new good and evil is she. Verily, a new deep murmur and the voice of a new well!Power is she, this new virtue; a dominant thought is she, and around her a wise soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?
— Gordon R. Dickson, Dorsai!
The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilised, than soft and weak, isn't it?
— Kevin Dutton, The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success
I really believe," said Wanda thoughtfully,"that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. Our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses. Were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane.
— Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Success is not worth rejoicing over, failure is not worth grieving over.
— Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms: Classic Novel in Four Volumes
Victory and defeat are but ordinary events in a soldier's career, and why should you give up?
— Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms: Classic Novel in Four Volumes
It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.
— Thomas Jefferson
Virtue makes for a cold bed.
— Ava Zavora, Forever Elude Me
Warriors, warriors we call ourselves. We fight for splendid virtue, for high endeavor, for sublime wisdom, therefore we call ourselves warriors.
— Aunguttara Nikaya
Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.
— Ruth Fulton Benedict
There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013.
— Douglas Wilson
The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.
— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
A truly virtuous man would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own friend. If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn’t have friends.
— Montesquieu
Vice is nice, but a little virtue won't hurt you.
— Edward Gorey
Joy is love exalted
—  peace is love in repose
May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity— a virtuous woman. Anything, Devil, but that.
— Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming
Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it’s a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.
— Ian McEwan, Solar
Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see
— G.K. Chesterton
Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
St. Augustine hated the Stoics, Dostoevsky hated the Russian Liberals. At first sight this seems a quite inexplicable peculiarity. Both were convinced Christians, both spoke so much of love, and suddenly - such hate! And against whom? Against the Stoics, who preached self-abnegation, who esteemed virtue above all things in the world, and against the Liberals who also exalted virtue above all things! But the fact remains: Dostoevsky spoke in rage of Stassyulevitch and Gradovsky; Augustine could not be calm when he spoke the names of those pre-Stoic Stoics, Regulus and Mutius Scaevola, and even Socrates, the idol of the ancient world, appeared to him a bogey. Obviously Augustine and Dostoevsky were terrified and appalled by the mere thought of the possibility of such men as Scaevola and Gradovsky - men capable of loving virtue for its own sake, of seeing virtue as an end in itself. Dostoevsky says openly in the Diary of a Writer that the only idea capable of inspiring a man is that of the immortality of the soul.
— Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths
I have an acute sense of delicacy. Naturally I am prejudiced in favour of virtue.("The Accursed Cordonnier")
— Bernard Capes, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned.
— Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.
— Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three
War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor.
— Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
— Thomas More, Utopia
self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
— Baruch Spinoza
What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring
— Søren Kierkegaard
No place is ugly to those who understand the virtues and sweetness of everything that God has made.
— George Sand, La Petite Fadette
The ruthlessness of the godly invalidated their claims of virtue.
— Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir
.. is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange?- and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage, temperance or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her? But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself, are a purgation of them.
— Socrates
...a great man who is vicious will only be a great doer of evil, and a rich man who is not liberal will be only a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it - and not by spending as he please but by knowing how to spend it well. To the poor gentleman there is no other way of showing that he is a gentleman than by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered and helpful; not haughty, arrogant or censorious, but above all by being charitable...and no one who sees him adorned with the virtues I have mentioned, will fail to recognize and judge him, though he know him not, to be of good stock.
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!
— Émile Zola, Une Page d'amour
Areté is a word that means excellence in character and life. It is the accumulation of virtue in one's life.
— Tobin Wilson
Courage is chief among virtues. For when any virtue is challenged, it is courage alone that can restore virtue.
— Jack B. Nicholson, Omnibuses: An American Essay
What about the virtue of letting others be themselves? Is this not the greatest virtue of all?
— Joshua Emmet, Celestial Kings and Queens
I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good
—  and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose.
It is said a virtuous woman is worth more than rubies. But I believe many men discover the hard way that virtue, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
— Amanda Quick, Rendezvous
If being alive is not a virtue, then there is little virtue in virtue.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
You instinctively display the greatest virtue, or rather the chief defect, of us eccentric Parisians- that is, you assume the vices you have not, and conceal the virtues you possess.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Men's evil manners live in brass
—  their virtue we write in water.
Withersoever the wheel of Fortune turns, Virtue stands firm upon her feet.
— Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography Of Benvenuto Cellini
Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child - let that be your word concerning virtue!
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche
There is an aesthetic dimension to virtue. In real life, as opposed to in celluloid, we are attracted to the good and repelled by the bad. Even the woman who says she prefers the archetypal 'bad boy' probably doesn't actually like it when he is bad toward her.
— John Dickson, Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership
Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him...As for the virtuous poor...they have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very poor pottage.
— Oscar Wilde
Never try to lock the virtue’s door with the key of viceIt may lock forever
—  never to be opened again
Of all fragrances, the sweetest is that of virtue.
— Isabel Allende, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon
CRITICISM is part of LEARNING and GROWTH. It means that you are taking INITIATIVES to learn something new and grow over from your current state. If you are not getting criticised, it means you are not taking enough RISK to learn something new and to grow.
— Sanjeev Himachali
It takes courage to become exceptional
— Les Dossey
Obstacles transformed become new capabilities
— Les Dossey
The fears you don't face delimit your growth.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Get a grip, get a clue, get a move on
— Unknownimous
Growth is not an ancient gift but how you face your fear.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Hate, just like love, is a propulsion force; it is also, to the unwise, a defining matter - On Hate.
— Lamine Pearlheart, To Life from the Shadows: Conversations with the Light
Growing your leadership capacity demands personal effectiveness. Being effective is the ability to do the right thing at all times, no matter the cost.
— Benjamin Suulola
Where you feel like really giving up is where your threshold growth lies.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
Growth can only come when you are insecure, when you don't know it all.
— Sravani Saha Nakhro
A Rainmaker creates value for the benefit of all through commitment.
— Jonas Caino
Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
— Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins: 50 Inspirational Life Lessons from Tony Robbins:
The person who is wrapped up in God keeps moving. That is the difference between a Spirit on fire and a Spirit that's burning out. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label.
— Eddie  Capparucci
If you know me based on who I was a year ago, You don't know me at all. My growth game is strong. Allow me to reintroduce myself..!!
— Aagam Shah
The people who need to grow, are the ones allowed the least chance to have a say in their own growth.
— Srividya Srinivasan
A flower that grows in the shade of another blooms slowly.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
Life only plants the seeds. It’s up to us to help them grow.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road
As plants do not grow in the dark, never allow yourself to be in someone’s shadow.
— Matshona Dhliwayo
The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Fool! Nothing but black ink runs through my veins!
— Hiromu Arakawa
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."(on Ernest Hemingway
— William Faulkner
The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so.
— Neil Gaiman
And I love Jane Austen's use of language too--the way she takes her time to develop a phrase and gives it room to grow, so that these clever, complex statements form slowly and then bloom in my mind. Beethoven does the same thing with his cadence and phrasing and structure. It's a fact: Jane Austen is musical. And so's Yeats. And Wordsworth. All the great writers are musical.
— Andrew Clements, Things Hoped For
True Devdas are Authors
— Santosh Avvannavar, Surrogate Author
If you are working with authors, you are accepting a great responsibility and must tread very carefully. The author's work is a part of herself, a creative endeavor she has poured her heart and soul into. Protecting and nurturing that work and the author is part of the job of a publisher.
— Terena Scott, What You Need to Know to Be a Pro; The Business Start-Up Guide for Publishers
Authors, reviews are not for you. They are not for you. Authors, reviews are not for you.
— Stacia Kane
Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.
— Libba Bray
You can, of course, write to inspire others… but most importantly, you must write to inspire yourself.
— Jessica  Swan
Being a bestseller doesnt mean they wrote a great book. Just means they knew a lot of people who would buy it.
— David A. Santos
An author’s strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher’s commitment to it.
— Sterling Lord, Lord of Publishing: A Memoir
I've always said "Writer's Block" is a myth. There is no such thing as writer's block, only writers trying to force something that isn't ready yet. Sometimes I don't write for weeks. And then all of the sudden I'll get a rush of inspiration and you can't drag me away from my notebook. But I don't stress out if I don't hit some arbitrary word count each day or if I go a few days without writing something.
— Julie Ann Dawson
Yes, I am an author. I have written some beautiful love stories and witnessed some ugly relationships.
— Nitin Kumar
Some men are born to be good some born to be badAs for me I only came with just a pen ‘n’ a pad.
— Carlos Salinas, Got the Flow: The Hip-Hop Diary of a Young Rapper
I know one thing for sho Heaven’s gotta have a ghettoCuz where else in death do I get to go?
— Carlos Salinas, Got the Flow: The Hip-Hop Diary of a Young Rapper
Don’t ever undermine writers for life is much about writing and memories are well kept through writing
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
It's not a job but a condition.(Alan Garner on writing)
— Alan Garner
Andrew Davies has said he prefers his authors dead, and I can see there is only a limited usefulness in a live one when it comes to adaptation.
— Alan Hollinghurst
You'll be amazed how much you have in common with Edith Wharton (who struggled to feel worthy of success), Louisa May Alcott (who badly needed money), Madaleine L'Engle (who could have papered an entire house with her rejection letters) and other writers...
— Nava Atlas, The Literary Ladies' Guide to the Writing Life
Writing is a conduit. It opens up a passageway into the past. Not just for the writer, but for the reader too. Both readers and writer are linked by the commonality of human experience.
— Lang Leav, Sad Girls
In our Impulsive nature to write and repulsive nature to read that has led to a decline in literary genius in our times!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
I have Shakespeared my Moliere to Tenessee, and I am Wild for Becket! But I got a little tired of the redundancy.
— Natasha Tsakos
Authors need readers and not followers. Authors need review and not Likes!
— Lily Amis
Raining with words
—  words becomes sentences
I am inspired to write, and I write to inspire.
— R.L. Hemlock