One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
Whenever there are great virtues, it is a sure sign that something is wrong.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtueq gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. Walking is the best medicine.
To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
In sloth and strenuous amusements the pleasures are followed by sorrows, but the diligence of virtue and the prudent management of life always offer pure and safer pleasures.
To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
There was no sign of Plato, and I was told later that he had gone to live in his Republic, where he was cheerfully submitting to his own Laws. [...] None of the Stoics were present. Rumour had it that they were still clambering up the steep hill of Virtue [...]. As for the Sceptics, it appeared that they were extremely anxious to get there, but still could not quite make up their minds whether or not the island really existed.
A minimum of comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue
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.
The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.
lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.
Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.
Elegance is inferior to virtue.
Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
Virtue can only flourish among equals
Men are drawn closer to virtue when they see the dishonor that falls on misleaders.
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.