What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

When much virtue is achieved, nothing is not overcome.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.

True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

It is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

One citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

Avoid places that disturb your mind, and always remain where your virtues increase.

Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions … The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don’t share ideas.

There is no sanctuary of virtue like a home.

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

the leading error of the human mind, – the bane of human happiness – the perverter of human virtue … is Religion – that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion – that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion – that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion – that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact…. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

Humility and resignation are our prime virtues.

Men’s virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.

Power makes gods. Virtue makes martyrs.

It’s no virtue to gain the whole world. Just gain the heart of one person.

a writer’s first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.