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Quotes about virtue

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Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.
Peter Singerborn 1946The Most Good You Can Do (2015), Preface, p. vii
- Charity
- Morality
How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking!
Abigail Adams1744–1818Letter to John Adams (10 July 1775)
There is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal for a hero. He never has time to sit on it. One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from under him, and using it to batter a world with.
Gerald Stanley Lee1862–1944Crowds (1913), Book V, Part III, Chapter XVI.
- Character
- Fame
Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
Aleister Crowley1875–1947The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 69
- Character
- Power
Character is the virtue of hard times.
Charles de Gaulle1890–1970Le Fil de l’épée (1932)
- Character
His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.
Aeschylus525–456 BCSeven Against Thebes (467 BC), line 592
- Character
Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ!
Pope John Paul II1920–2005Homily of His Holiness John Paul II for the Inauguration of his Pontificate, St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, on Sunday, 22 October 1978
- Christianity
- Courage
The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right.
William S. Burroughs1914–1997The Place Of Dead Roads‎ (1983), p. 155
- Character
- Clever Jabs
Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
Bruce Lee1940–1973Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 46
- Character
- Knowledge
Anyone who has no character is not a man, but a thing.
Nicolas Chamfort1740–1794Maximes et pensées (1805)
- Character
No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are.
Richard Bachborn 1936The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
- Character
What do you expect, one is what one is, partly at least.
Samuel Beckett1906–1989Molloy (1951)
- Character
He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.
Anthony Trollope1815–1882The Warden (1855), Ch. 3
- Character
My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.
Charlie Chaplin1889–1977My Autobiography (1964)
- Character
I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790Letter to Benjamin Vaughan (24 October 1788)
- Religion