Virtue Quotes - Page 27

• There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  People, Vices, Misery

  Theodore Dalrymple (2006). “Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy”

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• Republican democracy is overperfect and demands political virtues and talents far superior to our own.

  Simon Bolivar

  Political, Democracy, Demand

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• 'Tis virtue, and not birth that makes us noble: Great actions speak great minds, and such should govern.

  John Fletcher

  Mind, Noble, Action

  Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Mr. Theobald (Lewis), Mr. Seward, Sidrach Simpson (1750). “The Works of Mr. Francis Beaumont, and Mr. John Fletcher: In Ten Volumes. Collated with All the Former Editions, and Corrected. With Notes Critical and Explanatory”, p.133

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• It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Greatness, Understanding, Proof

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.22

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• Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.

  Donald Barthelme

  Art, Simple, Long

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• Mystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation.

  Paul Tillich

  Sacrifice, Self, Perfect

  Paul Tillich (1968). “The Courage To Be”

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• The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

  Simone Weil

  Soul, Transformation, Orientation

  Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.37, Routledge

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• Saving the virtues includes all other advantages

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Saving, Advantage

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• Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written... I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.

  Nuala O'Faolain

  Past, May, Action

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• What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it. Like love, it can come to commoners as well as courtiers. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Like the Holy Grail, it seldom appears to those who don't pursue it.

  Stephen Birmingham

  Like Love, Holy Grail, Rewards

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• The people of Iran have been battling against consecutive conflicts between tradition and modernity for over 100 years... some have tried and are trying to see the world through the eyes of their predecessors and to deal with the problems and difficulties of the existing world by virtue of the values of the ancients... many others...seek to go forth in step with world developments and not lag behind the caravan of civilization, development and progress.

  Shirin Ebadi

  Eye, Iran, Years

  Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2003.

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• We have a very foolish notion in Western countries that progress delivers freedom. But progress doesn't necessarily bring moral virtue.

  Richard Flanagan

  Country, Progress, Moral

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• The first contributing factor to a happy home is the sublime virtue of loyalty, one of the noblest attributes of the human soul.

  David O. McKay

  Loyalty, Home, Soul

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• [I]t's impossible to evade the fact that Endless War will inevitably degrade the citizenry of the country that engages in it. A country which venerates its military above all other institutions, which demands that its soldiers be spoken of only with religious-like worship, and which continuously indoctrinates its population to believe that endless violence against numerous countries is necessary and just - all by instilling intense fear of the minorities who are the target of that endless violence - will be a country filled with citizens convinced of the virtues and nobility of aggression.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Country, Religious, Military

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• The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.

  Plutarch

  Men, Discovery, Vices

  Plutarch (2010). “Plutarch's Lives”, p.4, Cosimo, Inc.

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• If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.

  Richard Dawkins

  Suicide, Children, Thinking

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• Courage is the greatest virtue because it guarantees all the rest.

  Winston Churchill

  Guarantees

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• Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

  Aleister Crowley

  Order, Understanding, Enlightenment

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• To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Men, Ancient

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Lives of the poets”, p.426

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• If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Islamic, America, Free Society

  "10 things to celebrate / Why I'm an anti-anti-American" by Dinesh D'Souza, www.sfgate.com. June 29, 2003.

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• I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.

  Murray Rothbard

  Art, Civilization, Political

  Murray Newton Rothbard, Leonard P. Liggio (1975). “"Salutary neglect": the American colonies in the first half of the 18th century”, Crown

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• If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well.

  Confucius

  Order, Law, Punishment

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• All things are possible to those who believe, less difficult to those who hope, more easy to those who love, and still easier to those who persevere in the practice of these three virtues.

  Kirk Cameron

  Believe, Practice, Three

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• Have courage then: make a virtue of necessity: ask of God, not deliverance from your pains, but strength to bear resolutely, for the love of Him, all that He should please, and as long as He shall please.

  Brother Lawrence

  Pain, Long, Bears

  Brother Lawrence (2012). “The Practice of the Presence of God and The Spiritual Maxims”, p.36, Courier Corporation

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• Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people will make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this: and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, an encourage it in others.

  Patrick Henry

  Wise, Art, Character

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