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...

A wholesome mother knows the software to delete, download, upgrade and upload for the best results.

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

What we’re fighting against isn’t an out-and-out vice. It’s an overgrown, perverted virtue.

What does Yagwavalkya say?’It is not our hermitage,’ he says—our religion ,we might say—’still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue ; virtue must be practised. Therefore let no one do to others...

Since childhood at my mother’s knee, I have believed in honor, ethics and right living as its own reward. I find a very small minority who agree with me on that premise.

Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the...

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...

Maximus was my model for self-control, fixity of purpose, and cheerfulness under ill-health or other misfortunes. His character was an admirable combination of dignity and charm, and all the duties of his station were performed...

[On the virtuous man] “He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.

Sorry, but I have to be who I am. Everyone else is taken… So be your self! Speak your truth – if there are people around you who tempt you with non-existence blast through that...

By the external appearance of your knowledge, you have attained (high) ranks and reverence with the people! So seek with Allah higher ranks and closeness by virtue of your hidden good deeds. And know that...

If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God’s sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another’s burdens, for there is no man...

We cultivate our feelings the way we cultivate a garden: we can’t entirely prevent weeds from coming up, but we can take care to remove them before they do much harm.

Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are...

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

And it is you, spirit–with will and energy, and virtue and purity–that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher.

My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (…)Response [by Lady Rectitude]: “Fair sweet friend, have you not...

A truly honorable person, would never convince another to stray, from their personal pursuit of honor. No, only one lacking this noble quality would try to justify and market, an existence without it.

To be moral, an act must be free.

You can seek out good fortune, authority (power), and even a righteous life-partner…and find them all. But when all of this is gone…which it will be eventually, I wish you Peace, which is only found...

Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our...

That I may carry on what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may be one day a grand and encouraging example that it may be said that there was finally some...

Fear of nature led to society; hatred among men lead to culture; envy among women led to virtue.

Do unto others…’ is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is – a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue....

Men, and pigs, are hard on women who sacrifice their virtue, especially for love.” Mattis Tannhouser

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.

Beauty is more popular than virtues because it is more visible than virtues.

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we...

The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who...

Diplomacy and virtue do not make easy companions.

By virtue of just adding that lane all the way through the system in both directions northbound and southbound, you’re going to increase the capacity.

For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People...