Prayerfulness Virtue Quotes

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. ~ Aristotle.

I don't ravish women, if that's what you're thinking," he said.
"Oh, no," she said. "I had supposed that women stood in line waiting for you to relieve them of their virtue. ~ Loretta Chase

At that moment, Mark looked far younger than his eighteen years. He seemed as vulnerable as I felt. Sometimes, the uniforms of the King's army hid lonely boys, far from home with only the company of rough men who cared little for virtue. Mark was reaching out for worthy friendship, and I would not withdraw my hand. Yes, Mark. We are friends. I know you would never do anything that would dishonor that friendship. ~ Sarah Holman

Something new seems to be at work in the contemporary world - a process that is eating away the very heart of social life, not merely by putting salesmanship in place of moral virtue, but by putting everything - virtue included - on sale. ~ Roger Scruton

But the cultivation and expression of virtue (and vice) and the formation of conscience is not merely an individual act but also a communal one. In addition to shaping individual experience and character, great literature has a role in forming the communal conscience and public virtue. We can understand a great deal about culture - its strengths, its weakness, its blind spots, and its struggles - when we examine the literature it not only produces but reveres. ~ Karen Swallow Prior

The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend above the level of their age and country; and the same stature, which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous in a race of pygmies. ~ Edward Gibbon

Man is made of thought, of will and of love: he can think truth or error, he can will good or evil, he can love beauty or ugliness. Now thought of the true - or knowledge of the real - demands on the one hand willing of the good and on the other love of the beautiful, hence virtue, for virtue is none other than beauty of soul; that is why the Greeks, who were aesthetes as well as thinkers, included virtue within philosophy. Without beauty of soul, all willing is sterile, it is petty and closes itself to grace; and in an analogous manner: without effort of will, all spiritual thought ultimately remains superficial and ineffectual and leads to pretension. Virtue coincides with a sensibility proportioned - or conformed - to the Truth, and that is why the soul of the sage soars above things and thereby above itself, if one may put it thus; whence the disinterestedness, nobleness and generosity of great souls. Quite clearly, the consciousness of metaphysical principles cannot go hand in hand with moral pettiness, such as ambition and hypocrisy : "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. ~ Frithjof Schuon

The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight. ~ Aldous Huxley

Endurance is the queen of all virtues. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

I have come to believe that contentment is a virtue we can aspire to rather than a state we can achieve. ~ Dave Bruno

Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure. ~ Aristotle.

When we exaggerate our friends' tenderness towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own virtue. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I've trained you to be as honest as any man who ever lived, but if virtue serves to guide our actions with our friends and allies, every sort of trick can be used against our enemies. That's why you were taught never to hunt a lion or a bear without some special advantage. Didn't that kind of lesson teach you cunning and deceit? ~ Xenophon

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Tolerance is a relatively weak virtue; we're called to so much more than that in the body of Christ. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Father Ratti had often explained, in Religious Knowledge class, that true humility did not mean a sense of worthlessness or the kind of timidity that caused some people to be cheated and bullied all their lives. The virtue of humility, Ratti said, was merely the faculty of intelligence operating properly "The man of wisdom," Ratti explained once, "fears only one man on earth. Do you know who that is?" And when everybody guessed wrong - some said the Pope, some said King Ferdinand - Ratti said, "The man of wisdom fears himself. He knows who it is who tells him the most plausible lies, the lies he wants to believe. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in Islamic societies because coerced virtues are not virtues at all. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends. She assembles in a single fantastic personage, circumstances and features which nature distributes among many individuals. From this combination, ingeniously composed, results that happy imitation by virtue of which the artist earns the title of inventor and not of servile copyist. ~ Francisco Goya

Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness. ~ Samuel Johnson

Clearly, what God wants above all is our will which we received as a free gift from God in creation and possess as though our own. When a man trains himself to acts of virtue, it is with the help of grace from God from whom all good things come that he does this. The will is what man has as his unique possession ~ Saint Joseph

Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The domestic relations precede, and in our present existence are worth more than all our other social ties. They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes form the chief interest of human life. ~ William Ellery Channing

However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When you begin to see that this assignment of extreme virtue or evil to a person or object is what makes them an object of lust or hatred, the emotion built on that exaggeration backs off; we ~ Dalai Lama XIV

To meet the serious issues facing us in our respective communities today, we must be examples of virtue and righteousness ourselves and choose today to take our stand on the moral issues which threaten us. ~ Nathan Eldon Tanner

Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues. ~ Joseph Hall

Grace thou thy house and let not that grace thee. ~ Benjamin Franklin

One leading French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, famously proposed that climate and other conditions in the New World had led to the inevitable degeneration of its fauna and flora. Buffon's more enthusiastic readers extrapolated from this argument to call into question the virility and intelligence of both America's European settlers and its native inhabitants, the Indians. That sparked a rousing defense of American virtue and vigor from Jefferson, spelled out in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia.20 ~ Jonathan Lyons

She claims they give her moral virtue too, but then she has buckets more of that than she needs. ~ Gregory Maguire

My son, forbearance is a great virtue; there's no other like it. ~ Sarada Devi

In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between "superior" and "inferior" to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity. ~ Benjamin Hoff

All the time, circumstances are not going to favor us. We shall have to
face obstacles and adversities. Fearlessness is the first virtue of a hero, the
starting point of all other noble virtues. ~ Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love - You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance.
The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. ~ C.S. Lewis

Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: "Contempt for death." For us as artists, read "failure. ~ Steven Pressfield

Well may your heart believe the truths I tell; 'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell. ~ Wilkie Collins

Nonviolence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice - nonviolence springs from love, cowardice from hate. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity black political unity is possible. ~ Angela Davis

Life should be full of- Compassion, Peace, Companionship, Honor, Love, Honesty, Joy, Rapture, Euphoria, Friendship, Family, Spiritual Enrichment, Enlightenment, Trust, Truth, Loyalty, Passion, Cultural Enrichment, Unity, Serenity, Zen, Wonder, Respect, Beauty of All Kinds, Balance of all Creation, Philosophy, Adventure, Art, Happiness, Bliss, Serendipity, Kismet, Fantasy, Positivity, Yin, Yang, Color, Variety, Excitement, Sharing, Fun, Sound, Paradise, Magick, Tenderness, Strength, Devotion, Courage, Conviction, Responsibility, Wisdom, Justice, Satisfaction, Fulfillment, Purpose, Mystery, Healing, Learning, Virtue, History, Creativity, Imagination, Receptiveness and Faith. For through these things you are One with your Creator. ~ Solange Nicole