Virtuous Quotes - Page 18

• For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

  John Milton

  Freedom, Men, Skills

  John Milton (1851). “The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction”, p.245

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• Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Witty, Struggle, People

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.302, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• To point out the importance of circumspection in your conduct, it may be proper to observe that a good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.

  George Washington

  Character, Men, Important

  George Washington (1983). “The Papers of George Washington”

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• Nothing is more important for the public wealth than to form and train youth in wisdom and virtue. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Character, People, Important

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• All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

  Iris Murdoch

  Art, Struggle, Literature

  "The Philosopher's Pupil".

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• There is much that is difficult and challenging in the world today, my brothers and sisters, but there is also much that is good and uplifting. As we declare in our thirteenth article of faith, 'If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.' May we ever continue to do so.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Uplifting, Brother, Adversity

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• I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Misery, Made, Make Me Happy

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1823). “Frankenstein: ; Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.207, DOSER Reads

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• Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Law, Cities

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• In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn't about Sept. 11. It's about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies - or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers - and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.

  Manohla Dargis

  Baby, Loneliness, Sadness

  "A Youngster With a Key, a Word and a Quest" by Manohla Dargis, www.nytimes.com. December 22, 2011.

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• [Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Average, Atheism

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.117, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I will have no Parsons around me but such as drink deep, ride to Hounds and caress the Wives and Daughters of their Parishioners.A Virtuous Parson does nothing to test or exercise the Faith of his Flock.

  Aldous Huxley

  Faith, Daughter, Exercise

  Aldous Huxley (1983). “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”, Harpercollins

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• Hollywood keeps before its child audiences a string of glorified young heroes, everyone of whom is an unhesitating and violent Anarchist. His one answer to everything that annoys him or disparages his country or his parents or his young lady or his personal code of manly conduct is to give the offender a "sock" in the jaw.... My observation leads me to believe that it is not the virtuous people who are good at socking jaws.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Country, Children, Believe

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.6038, e-artnow

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• Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
  Like season'd timbered, never gives;
  But though the whole world turn to coal,
  Then chiefly lives.

  George Herbert

  Sweet, Giving, Soul

  'Outlandish Proverbs' (1640) no. 420

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• Some things the legislator must find ready to his hand in a state, others he must provide. And therefore we can only say: May our state be constituted in such a manner as to be blessed with the goods of which fortune disposes (for we acknowledge her power): whereas virtue and goodness in the state are not a matter of chance but the result of knowledge and purpose. A city can be virtuous only when the citizens who have a share in the government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens share in the government.

  Aristotle

  Blessed, Government, Hands

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3135, Delphi Classics

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• We, as Americans, have won the lottery of life and the distinction between us and people living in Kalighat is not that we are smarter, not that we're harder working, not that we're more virtuous - it's that we're luckier.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  People, Distinction, Harder

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• When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Children, Lying

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

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• If the Wise be the happy man... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wise, Men, Emulation

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.532

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• Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

  Aristotle

  Would Be, Citizens, Body

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.380, Simon and Schuster

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• Hollywood wants its heroes to be virtuous, but it defines virtue in a way that excludes any action that is self-interested. If virtue means putting others ahead of self, then it's clear that most people, let alone most capitalists, aren't very virtuous.

  Alex Tabarrok

  Hero, Mean, Self

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• The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Government, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.91, Knopf

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• Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous-our star that of the public.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Stars, Gains, Merit

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• Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent; . . . they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.

  Aristotle

  Pride, Men, People

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• It must not be supposed that happiness will demand many or great possessions; for self-sufficiency does not depend on excessive abundance, nor does moral conduct, and it is possible to perform noble deeds even without being ruler of land and sea: one can do virtuous acts with quite moderate resources. This may be clearly observed in experience: private citizens do not seem to be less but more given to doing virtuous actions than princes and potentates. It is sufficient then if moderate resources are forthcoming; for a life of virtuous activity will be essentially a happy life.

  Aristotle

  Happiness, Happy Life, Self

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• Prosperity seldom chooses the side of the virtuous.

  Heloise

  Sides, Prosperity

  Abelard, Heloise “Abelard letters”, Lulu.com

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• Yale's endowment became a metaphor for the kind of training it offered its graduates, namely, how to exploit the global marketplace, and technology, for your own interests, while maintaining a smokescreen of virtuous intent.

  Jess Row

  Technology, Training, Graduates

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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