Virtue Quotes

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true. ~ Tom Jones by Henry Fielding It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there. ~ Hard Times by Charles Dickens He said something about punctuality being one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life. ~ To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue. ~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen It is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies, affections, confidences—all the qualities which in better constituted minds are virtues—dwindle into foibles, or turn into downright vices. ~ Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens "I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong." ~ The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins No virtue could charm him, no vice shock him. He had about him a natural good manner, which seemed to qualify him for the highest circles, and yet he was never out of place in the lowest. ~ Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope "I thought her
As chaste as unsunned snow." ~ Cymbeline by William Shakespeare If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue. ~ Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray "Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!" ~ Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter