Great Throughts Treasury

"The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The virtue of the soul does not insist in flying high, but in walking orderly." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Truth is the first and fundamental part of virtue. We must love it for itself." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Virtue’s tool is moderation, not strength." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say; it! virtue even has need of limits." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Some virtue is needed, but not too much. Excess in anything is a defect." - Monvel, pseudonymn for Jacques Marie Boutet NULL

"Virtue is to her self the best reward." - Henry Spencer Moore

"To be humble to superiors, is duty; to equals, is courtesy; to inferiors, is nobleness; and to all, safety; it being a virtue that, for all its lowliness, commandeth those it stoops to." - Thomas More, fully Sir Thomas More or Saint Thomas More

"There is a point when patience ceases to be a virtue." - Thomas Morton

"The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind." - Theodore T. Munger

"It were no virtue to bear calamities if we do not feel them." -

"Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but, if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue." -

"I cannot worship from abstractions of virtue; she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs." - Barthold Niebuhr, fully Barthold Georg Neibuhr

"Virtue which alone is free, cannot be brought into subjection." - Jeronimo Osorio da Fonseca

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." - Thomas Paine

"A large part of virtue consists in good habits." - William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa

"To seek virtue for the sake of reward is to dig for iron with a spade of gold." - Nikita Ivanovich Panin

"No virtue fades out of mankind. No over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue." - Joseph Parker

"Virtue is health, vice is sickness." - Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

"Each virtue is its own reward." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Virtue is the art of the whole life." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"He who dies for virtue does not perish." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

"Virtue is the highest reward. Virtue truly goes before all things." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

"To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone, is Happiness." - Plotinus NULL

"Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. so do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine." - Plotinus NULL

"The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, is virtue’s prize." - Alexander Pope

"The habit of dissipating every serious thought by a succession of agreeable sensations is as fatal to happiness as to virtue; for when amusement is uniformly substituted for objects of moral and mental interest, we lose all that elevates our enjoyments above the scale of childish pleasures." - Anna Maria Porter

"A sincere acquaintance with ourselves teaches us humility; and from humility springs that benevolence which compassionates the transgressors we condemn, and prevents the punishments we inflict from themselves partaking of crime, in being rather the wreaking of revenge than the chastisements of virtue." - Jane Porter

"It depends on education to open the gates which lead to virtue or to vice, to happiness or to misery." - Jane Porter

"Fear is a hindrance to all virtue." - Publius Syrus

"Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart’s paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul’s purgatory. It is the wise man’s bonfire, and the fool’s furnace." - Francis Quarles

"Happy is he the place of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honour." - Francis Quarles

"Let the foundation of thy affection be virtue, then make the building as rich and as glorious as thou canst; if the foundation be beauty or wealth, and the building virtue, the foundation is too weak for the building, and it will fall: happy is he, the palace of whose affection is founded upon virtue, walled with riches, glazed with beauty, and roofed with honor." - Francis Quarles

"The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fools furnace." - Francis Quarles

"Virtue is nothing but an act of loving that which is to be beloved, and that a t is prudence, from whence not to be removed by constraint is fortitude; not to be allured by enticements is temperance; not to be diverted by pride is justice." - Francis Quarles

"The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except the principles of the Christian faith..." - James H. Aughey

"The first virtue is to be without vice." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"Vice, the opposite of virtue, shows us more clearly what virtue is. Justice becomes more obvious when we have injustice to compare it to. Many such things are proved by their contraries." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"What is good readily changes for the worse, but you can never turn vice into virtue." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

"There may be guilt when there is too much virtue." - Jean Racine, baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine

"Never hesitate to ask where the acquisition of virtue is concerned." - Elijah ben Raphael

"The rule of law is essentially a negative value. The law inevitably creates a great danger of arbitrary power - the rule of law is designed to minimize the danger created by the law itself. Similarly, the law may be unstable, obscure, retrospective, etc., and thus infringe people’s freedom and dignity. The rule of law is designed to prevent his danger as well. Thus the rule of law is a negative virtue in two senses: conformity to it does not cause good except through avoiding evil and the evil which is avoided is evil which could only have been caused by the law itself." - Joseph Raz

"If self-knowledge be a path to virtue, virtue is a much better one to self-knowledge. The more pure the soul becomes, it will, like certain precious stones that are sensible to the contact if poison, shrink from the fetid vapors of evil impressions." -

"Since truthfulness, as a conscious virtue and sacrifice, is the blossom, nay, the pollen, of the whole moral growth, it can only grow with its growth, and open when it has reached its height." -

"If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror - virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." -

"A virtue and a muscle are alike. If neither of them is exercised they get weak and flabby." - Richard L. Rooney

"No act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right... moral acts often (as every one knows) and indeed always (on reflection we must admit) have different characteristics that tend to make them a the same time prima facie right and prima facie wrong; there is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa." - W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross

"Who does not sufficiently hate vice, does not sufficiently love virtue." -