Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
William Shakespeare

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
William Shakespeare

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

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Horace Mann

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.
Henry David Thoreau

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one

Blushing is the color of virtue.
Diogenes

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong”.

Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.
Denis Diderot

So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time
William Shakespeare

Virtue is insufficient temptation.
George Bernard Shaw

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
Albert Einstein

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
Charles Caleb Colton

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Modesty and unselfishness – these are virtues which men praise – and pass by.
Andre Maurois

I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Beauty without virtue is like a rose without scent.

Virtue is its own revenge.
E.Y. Harburn

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.
Theodore M. Hesburgh

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can’t separate them. They’re wedded.
Henry Miller

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

A man hasn’t got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined.
Anne Petry

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Sin is commitable in thought, word or deed; so is virtue.
Martin H. Fischer

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.
Robert S. Lynd

Women’s virtue is frequently nothing but a regard to their own quiet and a tenderness for their reputation.

The excess of virtue is a vice.
Greek Proverb

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues.
Hugh Prather

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny a sun because it is not always day.
Augustus William Hare & Julius Charles Hare

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

Water which is too pure has no fish.
Ts’ai Ken T’an

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.
Edith Sitwell

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

Some folks wear their halos much too tight.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

What, after all, is a halo? It’s only one more thing to keep clean.
Christopher Fry

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.
La Rochefoucauld