Virtue Quotes

A superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions.

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

Lasting peace is sought, it is essential to adopt international measures to improve the lot of the masses. The welfare of the entire human race must replace hunger and oppression. People of the world must be taught to give up envy, avarice, and rancour.

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.

The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

One can also be undignified and flattering toward a virtue.

One is punished best for one's virtues.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes.

We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent.

What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia.

You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today?

One must be born to any superior world - to make it plainer, one must be bred for it. One has a right to philosophy (taking the word in its greatest sense) only by virtue of one's breeding; one's ancestors, one's blood, decides this, too.

Many generations must have worked on the origin of a philosopher; each one of his virtues must have been separately earned, cared for, passed on, and embodied.

He who wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue; then others can imitate and, at the same time, rise above the one being imitated - something which people love.

Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue. Not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is faith that saves here also!

What can it matter to us what tinsel the sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so humane!

There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as the rich, the possessors.