Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

The object of the superior man is truth.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

Duty cannot exist without faith.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

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

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

Honor is the reward of virtue.