Virtues

"The appetites weaken a person's virtue because they are like shoots burgeoning about a tree, sapping its strength, and causing it to be fruitless."

"I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it was very tiresome." "Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is never tiresome." Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye. "What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!"

"Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis."

"A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an ‘is’; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i.e., a loving disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command, because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command."

"The ideal incentives to virtuous energy are a sort of moon to the moral world. Their borrowed light is but a dimmer substitute for the life-giving rays of religion."

"Only Virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead."

"The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he a void becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes."

"That which especially distinguishes a high order of man from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage; but it is self-forgetfulness; it is self-sacrifice; it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advantage, remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right."

"Vilfredo Pareto spoke of a "sexual religion" that in the nineteenth century, with its taboos, dogmas, and intolerance, accompanied religion as usually understood. It was particularly virulent in Anglo-Saxon countries, where it had, and in part still has as its worthy companions, two other brand-new, dogmatic, secular religions: humanitarian progressivism and the religion of democracy. […] It is known that virtus in antiquity and even during the Renaissance had the meaning of a force of the soul, of virile quality, of power, while later its prevalent meaning became sexual, so much that Pareto could coin the term "virtuism" itself to characterize the said puritanical religion. […] I have already indicated the principles of a "greater morality" that, being dependent on a kind of interior race, cannot be damaged by nihilistic dissolutions: these include truth, justice, loyalty, inner courage, the authentic, socially unconditioned sentiment of honor and shame, control over oneself. These are what are meant by "virtue"; sexual acts have no part in it except indirectly, and only when they lead to a behavior that deviates from these values."

"We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,—not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue’s other and more precise name."

"Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."

"How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily."

"Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house."

"Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue."

"To gain a reputation for virtue, grieve over those you injure."

"To be able to practise five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue ... gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness."

"Persecution is a very easy form of virtue."

"A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will."

"O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."

"Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease."

"Virtue will have greater claims To love, than rank with vice combin'd."

"He whose mind is satisfied with virtue that has been achieved, Who never thinks to stir himself And take a meditation subject up, Contented with mere virtuousness, Nor striving for a higher state— His virtue bears the appellation Of that partaking of stagnation."

"When Heracles was quite a young man and was nearly of the age at which you yourselves are now, while he was deliberating which of the two roads he should take, the one leading through toils to virtue, or the easiest, two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice. Now at once, although they were silent, the difference between them was evident from their appearance. For the one had been decked out for beauty through the art of toiletry, and was overflowing with voluptuousness, and she was leading a whole swarm of pleasures in her train; now these things she displayed, and promising still more than these she tried to draw Heracles to her. But the other was withered and squalid, and had an intense look, and spoke quite differently; for she promised nothing dissolute or pleasant, but countless sweating toils and labours and dangers through every land and sea. But the prize to be won by these was to become a god, as the narrative of Prodicus expressed it; and it was this second woman that Heracles in the end followed."

"He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all."

"If he [Anthony] heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue."

"Virtue ... is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme."

"Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean ... it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect."

"If the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them. ... He must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and ... his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character."

"Virtue is the health of the soul."

"Virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition."

"Virtue is the mistress of all things. Virtue is the master of all things."

"Many quite nefarious ideologies pass for common sense. For decades of American history, it was common sense in some quarters for white people to own slaves and for women not to vote. ... If common sense sometimes preserves the social status quo, and that status quo sometimes treats unjust social hierarchies as natural, it makes good sense on such occasions to find ways of challenging common sense."

"Wit, without sense, iz like a razor without a handle"

"Common sense is the favorite daughter of Reason, and altho thare are menny other wimmin more attraktive for a time, thare is nothing but death kan rob common sense ov her buty"

"Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life."

"Common sense should be renamed, cos nower days it's rare"

"To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one’s duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the Goodness that has given so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation."

"On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare.""

"Whatever the common-sense of earlier generations may have held in this respect, modern common-sense holds that the scientist's answer is the only ultimately true one. In the last resort enlightened common-sense sticks by the opaque truth and refuses to go behind the returns given by the triangle of facts."

"There is absolutely no common sense; it is common nonsense."

"There is nothing more uncommon than common sense."

"Common sense is the very antipodes of science."

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

"Since the world is what it is, it is clear that valid reasoning from sound principles cannot lead to error; but a principle may be so nearly true as to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may lead to practical consequences which we feel to be absurd. There is therefore a justification for common sense in philosophy, but only as showing that our theoretical principles cannot be quite correct so long as their consequences are condemned by an appeal to common sense which we feel to be irresistible."

"Common sense is not wrong in the view that is meaningful, appropriate and necessary to talk about the large objects of our daily experience…Common sense is wrong only if it insists that what is familiar must reappear in what is unfamiliar."

"I am one of those philosophers who have held that that "the Common Sense view of the world" is in certain fundamental features, wholly true."

"I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic."

"A small overweight of knowledge is often a sore impediment to the movements of common sense."

"We know that the probability of well-established induction is great, but, when we are asked to name its degree we cannot. Common sense tells us that some inductive arguments are stronger than others, and that some are very strong. But how much stronger or how strong we cannot express."

"In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgement, his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption."