Virtue Of Modesty Quotes

By the virtue of modesty the devout person governs all his exterior acts. With good reason, then, does St. Paul recommend this virtue to all and declare how necessary it is and as if this were not enough he considers that this virtue should be obvious to all. ~ Pio Of Pietrelcina

The virtue of modesty leads to eternal happiness. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Nietzsche envisaged a cultural revolution in which our appreciation of language and our conceptions of truth and knowledge would undergo a fundamental transformation. This emphasis on the crucial importance of language does not mean that Nietzsche is guilty of idealism. For him language is a material phenomenon which is rooted in our animal bodily human needs and which has historically evolved. In one of the opening sections of "Human, All Too Human", for example, he attacks philosophers for lacking a historical sense which results in their inability to grasp the fact that the human animal is a creature which is not an 'aeterna veritas' but is one which has 'become'; the same applies to the human faculty of cognition. 'Everything' Nietzsche insists, 'has become. There are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths'. Consequently, he argues, 'what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty. ~ Keith Ansell-Pearson

A man should never boast of his courage, nor a woman of her virtue, lest their doing so should be the cause of calling their possession of them into question. ~ Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

Because I am still weak in love and imperfect in virtue, I need to be strengthened and comforted by Thee; therefore visit Thou me often and instruct me with Thy holy ways of discipline. Deliver me from evil passions, and cleanse my heart from all inordinate affections, that, being healed and altogether cleansed within, I may be made ready to love, strong to suffer, steadfast to endure. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue. ~ James Buchan

The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle. ~ John Adams

This wisdom sees water for water, earth for earth, fire for fire, and wind for wind. We are not surprised by change, and when it occurs, we can be like water and flow. When it is time to be solid like the earth, we can be steadfast. When the heat of enthusiasm is necessary, we are like the fire of all fires. We can blow with the wind of virtue, uplifting any situation. Or we can rest in space, accommodating everything. This is the power of a king or queen - the warrior of all warriors. ~ Sakyong Mipham

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition. ~ Josef Pieper

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people? ~ Karen Armstrong

The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb. And whether the contest be carried on with ballots or bullets, the principle is the same; for under the theory of government now prevailing, the ballot either signifies a bullet, or it signifies nothing. And no one can consistently use a ballot, unless he intends to use a bullet, if the latter should be needed to insure submission to the former. ~ Lysander Spooner

Wisdom or accident, at length, recall us from our error, and offers to us some object capable of producing a pleasing, yet lasting effect, which effect, therefore, we call happiness. Happiness has this essential difference from what is commonly called pleasure, that virtue forms its basis, and virtue being the offspring of reason, may be expected to produce uniformity of effect. ~ Ann Radcliffe

Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not think, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world-which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us, very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will--that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. ~ James Baldwin

Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ's rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn. ~ Kevin Brockmeier

Be it mine to draw from wisdom's fount, pure as it flows, that calm of soul which virtue only knows. ~ Aeschylus

I returned to Jerusalem, and it is by virtue of Jerusalem that I have written all that God has put into my heart and into my pen. ~ Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices ~ Ayn Rand

We are more put off by people who parade their dignity than by people who show off their wardrobes. When people have to trick themselves out to gain attention, it is a sure sign that they are unworthy of it. If we want to make ourselves worthy, we can do so only by the innate eminence conferred by virtue. We hold great people in esteem more for the qualities of their soul than for the qualities of their fortune. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks, walks on the path of life, that walks with Jesus: preaching, proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming joy, lengthens and widens that path. ~ Pope Francis

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins? ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

This was loyalty of a sort which was rare in an age of self-indulgence. It was an old-fashioned virtue of the type which her philosophical colleagues extolled but could never themselves match. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

That life can be a rich place, comprised of the highbrow and the lowdown, the casual and the ambitious, private reading and public sharing. As a parent in that landscape, you'll need to be sometimes traveling companion, sometimes guides, sometimes off in your own part of the forest. A relationship between readers is complicated and cannot be reduced to such "strategies" as mandatory reading aloud, a commendable family activity whose pleasure has been codified into virtue, transforming the nightly bedtime story into a harbinger of everybody's favorite thing: homework. ~ Roger Sutton

Well, anyway- then came the sixth hour! It was not possible to grant every request to watch from close-up. In his wisdom, the commandant decreed that children should be given first priority. By virtue of my office, of courser, I was always nearby; often I was squatting there with a small child in either arm. How we drank in the transfigured look on the sufferer's face, how we bathed our cheeks in the warmth of that justice- achieved at long last and fading quickly. What times those were, my comrade! ~ Franz Kafka

False modesty is as bad as false pride. Know exactly what you are capable of at any moment, and act accordingly. Any other path is folly - and could be deadly in battle. ~ Christie Golden

Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

In fact, my itinerary, as I have hinted before, was influenced not so much by Tschiffely's journey--I hadn't even read his book--as by Snow's. Snow's original plan was not to stop after completing South America but to continue either straight up to Alaska or northeastward to Washington, D.C. My insane plan was to do both, thereby "completing" the Americas and by virtue of the extra distance gained by the detour to the east coast, recording the longest unbroken walk of all time. ~ George Meegan

Remain tranquil and prepare to bear still greater trials. All is not lost even though you be troubled oftener or tempted more grievously. You are a man, not God. You are flesh, not an angel. How can you possibly expect to remain always in the same state of virtue when the angels in heaven and the first man in paradise failed to do so? I am He Who rescues the afflicted and brings to My divinity those who know their own weakness. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Remember, cautioned the centaur. Modesty. Observance of the gods. In a fight do not do what you want to do, but what you judge you're enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest. ~ Stephen Fry

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence. ~ Samuel Johnson

My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else.
Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue. ~ C.S. Lewis

Many are really virtuous who cannot explain what virtue is ... But the powers themselves in reality perform their several operations with sufficient constancy and uniformity in persons of good health whatever their opinions be about them ... ~ Francis Hutcheson

The last rain had come at the beginning of April and now, at the first of June, all but the hardiest mosquitoes had left their papery skins in the grass. It was already seven o'clock in the morning, long past time to close windows and doors, trap what was left of the night air slightly cooler only by virtue of the dark. The dust on the gravel had just enough energy to drift a short distance and then collapse on the flower beds. The sun had a white cast, as if shade and shadow, any flicker of nuance, had been burned out by its own fierce center. There would be no late afternoon gold, no pale early morning yellow, no flaming orange at sunset. If the plants had vocal cords they would sing their holy dirges like slaves. ~ Jane Hamilton

A King may move a man, a father may claim a son, but remember that even when those who move you be Kings, or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus." Or that, "Virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that. ~ King Baldwin IV In Kingdom Of Heaven

Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument. ~ Rebecca West

Sufism is a vast and varied historical and civilizational phenomenon, touching upon poetic expression and sacred art, ethics and virtue, discipleship and spiritual guidance, humble service and spiritual practice, the nourishment of the heart and the illumination of vision. Yet all these many concerns coalesce ultimately to a single concern: that of the return to God. The way of this return is, at root, a matter of the ever-deepening inculcation of the reality of Divine Unity in one's being, as expressed in one's understanding, one's presence and attention, and ultimately one's very existence. This "Path of Unity" is none other than the central course of the entire tradition of Sufism. What ~ Peter Samsel

The speakers use all accents of sincerity and sweetness, and they continuously praise virtue; but they never speak as if power would be theirs tomorrow and they would use it for virtuous action. And their audiences also do not seem to regard themselves as predestined to rule; they clap as if in defiance, and laugh at their enemies behind their hands, with the shrill laughter of children. They want to be right, not to do right. They feel no obligation to be part of the main tide of life, and if that meant any degree of pollution they would prefer to divert themselves from it and form a standing pool of purity. In fact, they want to receive the Eucharist, be beaten by the Turks, and then go to heaven. ~ Christopher Hitchens