Assertion is a virtue, dominance is a vice.

Sex swims in marriage, while sex sinks in sin of being single.

In the common degree of the moral, there is no virtue. Virtue is excellence.

…happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves…. The...

As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we are capable of so much more. For that, good intentions are not enough. We must do. Even more important, we must become what Heavenly Father wants...

[I]t’s not enough to be right. I think you have to be generous. It’s not enough to be logical. You have to be virtuous…[Y]our demeanor will carry your message, perhaps, even further than your words...

Aristocracy’s only an admission that certain traits which we call fine – courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing – can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don’t...

It is only in virtue that you can discover, that you can live – not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding and freedom.

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...

The modern virtues fail because they concern the outer self, the human facade, the part of ourselves the world sees most readily – while the classical virtues form an organizing framework for our inner selves…...

I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.

Desire is a great virtue, but expectation is an even greater vice.

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

The virtue in most request is conformity.

Modesty isn’t always a virtue; it can be a hindrance; a careful measure of personal pride builds confidence and ensures success.

Learning to fail is a virtue. Failing to learn is a sin.

As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and...

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere...

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance and shimmy, and you’ve got an audience!

What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?

Many pride themselves, staking claim to the noble virtue that is loyalty. However, many resolve to give their allegiance to nothing. How can one demand loyalty, if one stands by nothing, nor commits to the...

It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.

A man’s shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics

Areté is a word that means excellence in character and life. It is the accumulation of virtue in one’s life.

Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.

Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on – in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,It’s...

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...

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...

Well, Mr Markham, you that maintain that a boy should not be shielded from evil, but sent out to battle against it, alone and unassisted – not taught to avoid the snares of life, but...

The victim is always morally superior to the master; that is the victim’s ambivalent triumph. That is why there have been so few notoriously wicked women in comparison to the number of notoriously wicked men;...

Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition that they dare to practice when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares, vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are...

Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something.”The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement....

I cut an inch off of every straw I see, just to make the world suck a little less.

Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process

Too much virtue can be criminal.

I’d rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.

Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn’t come naturally. And then, on the thousand and...

It is so easy to practice a creditable degree of so seeming virtue, and so difficult to purify and direct the affections of the heart, that I feel myself in continual danger of appearing better...

I can’t count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.

They had been brought up to think that the domestic virtues were self-evident and universal; they had been starved of the knowledge that most attracts the young mind: that the crown of life is the...

Fame is a jealous mistressAnd will brook no rival.

The beauty and music…It is a call…And some are not strong.

Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtue we write in water.

Wisdom or accident, at length, recall us from our error, and offers to us some object capable of producing a pleasing, yet lasting effect, which effect, therefore, we call happiness. Happiness has this essential difference...

Then the soul, freed from vice, purged by studies of true philosophy, versed in spiritual life, and practised in matters of the intellect, devoted to the contemplation of her own substance, as if awakened from...