Best 1793 quotes in «virtue quotes» category

Help from a sinner is better than sympathy from a saint.

Helping yourself is common sense, helping others is virtue, helping yourself and others is enlightenment.

Here all great emotions decay: here only little, dry emotions may rattle! Do you not smell already the slaughter-houses and cook-shops of the spirit? Does this city not reek of the fumes of slaughtered spirit? Do you not see the souls hanging like dirty, limp rags? – And they also make newspapers from these rags! Have you not heard how the spirit has here become a play with words? It vomits our repulsive verbal swill! – And they also make newspapers from this verbal swill. They pursue one another and do not know where. They inflame one another, and do not know why. They rattle their tins, they jingle their gold. They are cold and seek warmth in distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness in frozen spirits; they are all ill and diseased with public opinion. All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues.

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.

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.

He who on earth has lived in the conjugal state as he should live, will be placed among the Gods who dwell in heaven

High rise seldom survives the weak foundation.

Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost.

Honor cultures probably rely too much on shame, but our modern alternative is an epidemic of shamelessness.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.

How like God's love yours has been to me- so wise, so generous, and so unsparing!" exclaimed Pancratius. "Promise me one thing more- that is, that you will stay near to me to the end, and carry my last legacy to my mother.

Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all.

Hypocrisy a homage is true, That vice pays to virtue, Be man - himself so true, That no false does he brew.

Humility is the most undervalued godly virtue.

Humility makes me cry! There isn't a bigger asset than it.

...I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.

I am fit to capture a unicorn, and I should not be so questioned.

I am a Warrior of Virtue, Nenya, the Water Warrior. Ardan is safe at last. That is all that matters. That is all that will ever matter...

I am not wise enough to know if there is ever purpose in tragedy, if there is ever virtue in resisting it. If it cannot be overcome, then grief has beaten you, and you are right to say so.

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? [...] In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

I cannot say enough of appreciation for your determination to live by the standards of the Church, to walk with the strength of virtue, to keep your minds above the slough of filth which seems to be moving like a flood across the world. Thank you for knowing there is a better way. Thank you for the will to say no. Thank you for the strength to deny temptation and look beyond and above to the shining light of your eternal potential.

If a nation succeeds in making her people strong in virtues, then the nation is rich already.

I don't believe in sin. My relationships that failed have failed because I somehow attract devout christians. I don't believe in virtue either. I think people just do shit and it's life.

If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.

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.

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.

If being alive is not a virtue, then there is little virtue in virtue.

I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.

I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!” - The Narrator.

If the heart had a brain kind people would rule the world.

[I]f the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine ... And thou thyself wert not wholly unmindful of that ... [as in the narrative of thy misfortunes] thou hast not disdained to set forth sundry reasons by which I tried to dissuade thee from our marriage, from an ill-starred bed; but wert silent as to many, in which I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond. I call God to witness, if Augustus, ruling over the whole world, were to deem me worthy of the honour of marriage, and to confirm the whole world to me, to be ruled by me forever, dearer to me and of greater dignity would it seem to be called thy concubine than his empress.

If I attempt virtue it brings light to my life. If I indulge desires, I invite fog and confusion.

If one believes that God is up there in heaven, separate from the world, and is preparing a reward for you in the next life, the belief can have the result of making people accept their fate, however hard and unjust, and be less willing to change it. But for us, who find illumination in the mortal world, the situation is this: Where poverty, oppression, or pollution has taken root, and made the world less fit for the flourishing of life, there we find work to do.

If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue.

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they’ve been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we’re headed right back toward The Virtues.

If this is vise I want no virtue. ... I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. ... But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round us, if, nonetheless, it should come to pass that the wicked tread upon flowers, will it not be decided that it is preferable to abandon oneself to the tide rather than to resist it? Will it not be felt that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice, and that, in an entirely corrupted age, the safest course is to follow along after the others?

If we could believe so strong and strong enough in the invisible things like virtues and value system.

If we can spend more time uprooting vices and rooting virtues, our world will be safer and better.

If your greatest wish is to be happy, you are clever; if it is to make others happy, you are virtuous; but if it is to make yourself and others happy, you are wise.

If we lose our significance (character) we fall in ruin. The exploiters take over and sell freedom from fear, from guilt, from want. They excuse all corrupt actions. Collective status degenerates the human spirit.

If you do good to yourself, the ant knows. If you do good to others, the world knows. If you do good to everyone, the universe knows.

If you don’t allow one to become a lion, one will become a sheep. And the world is already filled with sheeps, which is the major cause of the society’s intellectual and moral downfall. For a better future to evolve, where humanism will be an all-pervading virtue and separatism will be a matter of ancient history, the world needs lions.

If you love truth, you are virtuous. If you practice truth, you are wise.

If you praise the virtues of the person who is two degrees higher than you, if you worship him, if you serve him; this is known as aradhana (veneration; worship). If you say bad things about him, defame him; it is known as viradhana (despise). Viradhana (despise) results in your down fall and aradhana (worship) results in your rise upwards.

If you seek money, be wise; if you seek power, be strong; if you seek honor, be virtuous; if you seek happiness, be yourself.

If you sweep a woman off of her feet, make sure your character is strong enough to keep her in the air.

If you venture to be a sage Let your virtues subside your rage For deep wisdom you’ll be venerated Let cold veins feel blood cells generated

If you want little, give little; if you want much, give much; if you want all, give all.