Virtuous Quotes

“The only way to gall and fret effectively is for yourself to be a good and honest man.”
― Diogenes

“Things have their roots and branches. Affairs have their beginnings and their ends. To know what is first and what is last will lead one near the Way.”
― Confucius, The Great Learning

“The corrupt are into rituals, whereas the virtuous are spiritual.”
― Abhaidev, The Gods Are Not Dead

“For in prosperity a man is often puffed up with pride, whereas tribulations chasten and humble him through suffering and sorrow. In the midst of prosperity the mind is elated, and in prosperity a man forgets himself; in hardship he is forced to reflect on himself, even though he be unwilling. In prosperity a man often destroys the good he has done; amidst difficulties he often repairs what he long since did in the way of wickedness.”
― King Alfred

“This is a night for song and sin and drink, for come the morrow, the virtuous and the vile burn together.”
― George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood

“It’s so easy to lose faith and become lost in all of the politics of the world. That’s why we need the arts. To sublimate our frustration and anger into something beautiful. Freud called sublimation a virtuous defence mechanism because it is in the arts that we can find our humanity.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“When someone is angry and hateful toward you ~ they spit out all kinds of venom, to inflict you with unnecessary hurt and pain. But when you know who you are within, and you stand by your truth, their venom cannot poison you, its arrow turns and points straight back at them! To be humble and virtuous is a trait of the noble and the righteous”
― Angie karan

“Innocent and virtuous, she represented the exact type of female he avoided... God, she was a taking thing, even for an avaricious reformer.”
― Karen Hawkins, The Abduction of Julia

“I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.”
― Adam Smith

“The way of living virtuously is by never doing ourselves what we blame in others”
― Thales

“When we develop the habit of appreciating others, they too appreciate us. This creates a virtuous cycle of appreciation in which there is mutual respect and admiration.”
― Awdhesh Singh, 31 Ways to Happiness

“You believe what you are and you are what you believe. This is a vicious or virtuous cycle in which we are all trapped. Our faiths and beliefs are like walls erected around us that provide us security but also act like a prison by blocking our view from the complete reality. We live in a make-believe world, oblivious to the reality that exists outside the four walls of our beliefs. The deep-rooted belief is called ‘faith’, which is responsible for many good things, but also for much of the evil in the world.”
― Awdhesh Singh, Myths are Real, Reality is a Myth

“The people who make wars, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word- these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.”
― Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

“Every person who is satisfied, content and happy thinks his understanding of happiness is truest because that is what he is experiencing. So, a virtuous person would subscribe his happiness to his virtuous deeds while an evil person would subscribe his happiness to his vices. Since a corrupt person has never lived a virtuous life, he will possibly never know the euphoria one derives from doing good deeds.”
― Awdhesh Singh, 31 Ways to Happiness

“Purity is the key to higher consciousness and virtuous existence.”
― pranita deshpande

“Censors are not virtuous but cowards, virtuous people can debate ideas that upset them and not demand opposing thoughts or words be expunged.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“The evil of hypocrisy lies in presenting certain acts as virtues. Hypocrites cannot actually be virtuous, so they create certain things that make them appear virtuous.”
― Nadine Sadaka Boulos

“Seeing this did more for Jo than the wisest sermons, the saintliest hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter. For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life––uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self–forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“Virtue is not the ability to tell right from wrong, virtue is the capacity to pursue the inconvenient right defying the comfort of the convenient wrong.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science

“The moralist cannot deny that, generally speaking, well-bred people addicted to a vice are much more likeable than the virtuous are...There may be some delightful people among the virtuous, but virtue usually believes that it is fair enough of itself to be able to dispense with trying to please.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette

“The goodie-goodies are the thieves of virtue.”
― Confucius

“When we give something the world needs, it also gives us back what we need. This exchange creates a virtuous cycle that enhances our joy manifold.”
― Awdhesh Singh, 31 Ways to Happiness

“There is another type of fiction which we create all the time to glorify ourselves and denounce others. We backbite more and praise less. We project ourselves as smarter than what we actually are and discredit the smartness of others. We cover our follies and believe that we are great, good and virtuous and brand others as evil and vicious.”
― Awdhesh Singh, Myths are Real, Reality is a Myth

“The virtuoso isn't always the one who has his métier down to a fine art but the one who lives for it.”
― Dahi Tamara Koch, Within the event horizon: poetry & prose

“The inmates of Belsen or Buchenwald did not have to die hallowed by their sufferings, or with a brave resignation to their fate, or conscious of themselves as world-historical figures, or exulting in the thought that, though they themselves might perish, the human spirit itself is invincible, in order to earn the title of tragic. They simply had to be men and women in an intolerable situation. The banal truth is that one does not need to do anything in particular to qualify as a tragic protagonist. One simply has to be a human being at the end of one’s tether. One does not have to be virtuous, only virtuous enough not to deserve the wretchedness to which you are reduced.”
― Terry Eagleton, Tragedy

“Let us focus on virtues, instead of bickering over the definition of virtues.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live

“Only moral sense of being can help one to be virtuous in imperfect society.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Virtue is never popular, yet virtue is the answer.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sapionova: 200 Limericks for Students

“Vision without virtue is inane.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“Vyasa arrived and spoke to Yudhishthira. "Virtuous conduct is always rewarded in this life or the next. Control your sorrow. Live each day with a calm and even mind, treating success and setback equally. Once, you lived in luxury and wealth; now you are suffering. To be happy, one has to suffer first. Each of these states is simply how things are...”
― Carole Satyamurti, Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling