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With virtue you can't be entirely poor; without virtue you can't really be rich.
-Chinese Proverb
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Sell not virtue to purchase wealth.
-English Proverb
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Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
-Joseph Addison
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A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.
-Minna Antrim
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All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
-Aristotle
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Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
-Aristotle
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The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
-Aristotle
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Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
-Francis Bacon
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Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.
-Natalie Clifford Barney
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Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.
-Charles Baudelaire
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There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.
-Charles Baudelaire
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But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Ephesians 5:3
-Bible
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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Galatians 5:23, 24
-Bible
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For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.
-Elizabeth Blackwell
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There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large.
-William Booth
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The highest virtue found in the tropics is chastity, and in the colder regions, temperance.
-Christian Nevell Bovee
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If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.
-Christian Nevell Bovee
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The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge.
-Francis H. Bradley
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The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
-Thomas Edward Brown
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There is no road or ready way to virtue.
-Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, I, 51.
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Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.
-Luis Bunuel
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If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
-Edmund Burke
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Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.
-William S. Burroughs
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If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.
-George Bush
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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.
-Samuel Butler
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Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
-Samuel Butler
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Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
-Samuel Butler
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A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
-Samuel Butler
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Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life -- and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
-Albert Camus
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Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.
-Thomas Carlyle
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The home is the chief school of human virtues.
-William Ellery Channing
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Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate ting, like pain or a particular smell.
-G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles
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He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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Virtue is its own reward.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
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We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.
-Alexander Comfort
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Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
-Confucius, The Confucian Analects
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To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness , and kindness.
-Confucius
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Think no vice so small that you may commit it, and no virtue so small that you may over look it.
-Confucius
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I have never seen a man as fond of virtue as of women.
-Confucius
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So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.
-Edward Dahlberg
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Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.
-Edward Dahlberg
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Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends... with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!
-Marquis De Sade
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Ah, Eug?nie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?
-Marquis De Sade
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Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
-Charles Dickens
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People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.
-Denis Diderot
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Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtues grave.
-Augustine J. Duganne
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Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.
-Isadora Duncan
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Vice is a creature of such hideous mien... that the more you see it the better you like it.
-Finley Peter Dunne
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The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The virtue in most request is conformity.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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-Erik H. Erickson
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The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
-Bergen Evans
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What's vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.
-Henry Fielding
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Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Vice knows that she is ugly, so she puts on her mask.
-Benjamin Franklin
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God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.
-Benjamin Franklin
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Virtue is the only true nobility.
-Thomas Fuller
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People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
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Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
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Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.
-David Hare
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To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
-William Hazlitt
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There is no substitute for virtue. Keep your thoughts virtuous. Rise above the filth that's all around you in this world and stand tall in strength and virtue. You can do this and you will be happier for it for as long as you live. God bless you in cherishing, developing and holding on to this great gift, the quality of personal virtue.
-Gordon B. Hinckley
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Why does a virtuous man take delight in the landscapes? Because the din of the dusty world and the locked-in-ness of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors; while on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find.
-Kuo His
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A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.
-Horace
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The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.
-Horace
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It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.
-Horace
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Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.
-Edward W. Howe
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Most vices demand considerable self-sacrifices. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a vicious life is a life of uninterrupted pleasure. It is a life almost as wearisome and painful -- if strenuously led -- as Christian's in The Pilgrim's Progress.
-Aldous Huxley
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Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.
-Silius Italicus, Punica
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The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.
-Samuel Johnson
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Virtue is too often merely local.
-Samuel Johnson
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Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.
-Samuel Johnson
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Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
-David Starr Jordan
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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 of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.
-Carl Gustav Jung
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You are a man, not God; you are human, not an angel. How can you expect to remain always in a constant state of virtue, when this was not possible even for an angel of Heaven, nor for the first man in the Garden?
-Thomas Kempis
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The time is always right to do what is right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The vices of some men are magnificent.
-Charles Lamb
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To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.
-Lao-Tzu
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Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-Abraham Lincoln
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Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
-Walter Lippmann
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Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
-John Locke
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The first time you see Winston Churchill you see all his faults and the rest of your life you spend discovering his virtues.
-Lady Constance Lytton
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A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
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The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
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Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence.
-Fran, A Letter to Myself
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Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.
-Don Marquis, The Almost Perfect State
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When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.
-Don Marquis
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Virtue that wavers is not virtue.
-John Milton
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I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
-John Milton
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There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
-Michel de Montaigne
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From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.
-Michel de Montaigne
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He who hates vice hates men.
-John Morley
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All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
-Iris Murdoch
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The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.
-Jawaharlal Nehru
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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.
-Cardinal J. Newman
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Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.
-Laurence Hope Nicolson
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And be on they guard against the good and the just! They would fain curcify those who devise their own virtue -- they hate the lonesome ones.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
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We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
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When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-Thomas Paine
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To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
-William Penn
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If we had to seek virtue outside of ourselves, that would assuredly be difficult; but as it is within us, it suffices to avoid bad thoughts and to keep our souls turned toward the Lord.
-Philokalia
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The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
-Plato
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Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
-Alexander Pope
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Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.
-Marcel Proust
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No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.
-Marcel Proust
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Virtue is harmony.
-Pythagoras
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However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.
-Fran
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We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
-Fran
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Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.
-Will Rogers
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I have always been fond of the West African proverb: Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.
There are several other cited sources of Roosevelt using this proverb.
-Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Henry L. Sprague, January 26, 1900
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Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
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The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.
-Sallust
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The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.
-Herbert Samuel
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It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.
-George Santayana, The Letters of George Santayana
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Virtue is reason which has become energy.
-Friedrich Von Schlegel
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What were once vices are the fashion of the day.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Assume a virtue if you have it not.
-William Shakespeare
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Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues we write in water.
-William Shakespeare
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Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
-George Bernard Shaw
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What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
-George Bernard Shaw
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
-Adam Smith
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Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. For a man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that hath this cunning to learn to die. I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundamental of all virtues.
-Heinrich Suso
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It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
-Jonathan Swift
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Every vice has its excuse ready.
-Publilius Syrus
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That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.
-Henry David Thoreau
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There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
-Henry David Thoreau
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I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.
-Mark Twain
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Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
-Mark Twain
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Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
-Mark Twain
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Temperance and labor are the two best virtues. Labor whets the appetite, temperance curbs it.
-Source Unknown
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Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.
-Sir John Vanbrugh
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Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.
-Marquis De Vauvenargues
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Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person.
-Virgil
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The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
-Stephen Vizinczey
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Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
-Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
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Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
-George Washington
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Virtue has its own reward, but no sales at the box office.
-Mae West
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I used to be snow white, but I drifted.
-Mae West
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I desire Virtue, though I love her not-
I have no faith in her when she is got:
I fear that she will bind and make me slave
And send me songless to the sullen grave.
-Anna Wickham, Self-Analysis in Contemplative Quarry, st. 3 (1915)
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It is easy enough to be virtuous When nothing tempts you to stray; When without or within No voice of sin Is luring your soul away. But it is only a negative virtue until it is tried by fire. For the soul that is worth the treasures of the earth is the soul that resists desire.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners -- your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards -- who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
-Thornton Wilder
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Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-Andrew Young
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Books about Virtue
