1,046 Quotes About Virtue

The greatest virtue in Man is his undying sense of hope.

As everyone knows, people revert to virtuous ways when they are too old for their virtue to be endangered. The confessor was not deceived by any of these women who repented out of impotence or malice and were inclined to criticize in others the very aberrations of which they themselves had formerly been guilty.

[E]ach individual is holy, it is God’s work, it is its own purpose. If it becomes what it can become according to its nature, then it has done enough, and what it profits others is a side issue.

Censors are not virtuous but cowards, virtuous people can debate ideas that upset them and not demand opposing thoughts or words be expunged.

It is an ill wind that does not blow some good. For example, it is well to be born in a decadent age; for one may obtain a reputation for virtue at a bargain price.

Virtue only needs to be worshipped; it follows the path to happiness...it must be so, a thousand arms open to receive its devotees, if they are pursued by adversity. But everybody deserts the guilty man...one blushes at one's attachment to him or at the tears one sheds for him, there is a fear of contagion, he is banished from everybody's hearts, and one condemns out of pride the man one ought to help out of humanity.

The more you feel the need to signal your virtue, the more you expose your real lack of it

Aristocracy in general does not favour individualism; it bases its claim to privilege upon virtues which are common to the whole class or at least to whole clans.

Crime causes so much horror, even to them [criminals], that they would like, in order to escape from the necessity they feel to be bad, to be believed and always to be depicted as virtuous.