Quotes about virtue
884 quotes from 395 people
A Man who is Master of Patience, is Master of everything else.
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax1633–1695Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), “Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections”I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.
Anaïs Nin1903–1977Diary entry, 25 March 1933The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave.
Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter 30.Assist a man in raising a burden; but do not assist him in laying it down.
Pythagoras583–491 BCSymbol 11Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov1921–2004BBC obituary (2004)There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963The Study of the Negro Problems, paragraph 51, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. XI (January 1898)Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.
Richard Stallmanborn 1953Thus Spake Stallman (2000)Ultimately what we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Jawaharlal Nehru1889–1964Parliamentary Debates [Parliament of India] Pt.2 V.12-13 (1951)If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
Abigail Adams1744–1818Letter to John Thaxter (29 September 1778)Among the Americans serving on Iwo island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.
Chester W. Nimitz1885–1966Statement after the Battle of Iwo Jima (c. March—May 1945); “UNCOMMON VALOR WAS A COMMON VIRTUE” has been inscribed on the USMC War Memorial.Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer1906–1945“After Ten Years” (Christmas 1942), in Letters and Papers from PrisonCharity is the great channel through which God passes all his mercy upon mankind.
Jeremy Taylor1613–1667Holy Dying (1651), chapter 2, section 3.But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961The Old Man and the Sea (1952)Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.
Albert Schweitzer1875–1965Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2: Civilization and Ethics
