Virtue

Seek virtue rather than riches. You may be sure to acquire the first; but cannot promise for the latter. No one can rob you of the first without your consent; you may be deprived of the latter a hundred ways. – James Burgh, The Dignity of Human Nature: Book III. Of Virtue, 1754

Piety and corruption go together like hot dogs and mustard. They have to. No one can fulfill the demands of piety; as a daily demand, it is inhuman. So it inspires the opposite—just for the sheer health of the body, if not the soul. – Norman Mailer, “Primitive Man, Art and Science, Evil and Judgment,” The Spooky A

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. – Horace Mann, "Thoughts for a Young Man," 1859

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice. – Henry David Thoreau

We bow with resignation beneath the tempestuous storms of life; but a daily vexation, like a moth eating a garment, consumes our virtue. – Anonymous, Aphorisms; or, A Glance at Human Nature, in Original Maxims, 1820

Virtue is insufficient temptation. – George Bernard Shaw

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. – Oliver Wendell Holmes,Jr.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. – Henry David Thoreau

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place. – Charles Caleb Colton

Modesty and unselfishness – these are virtues which men praise – and pass by. – André Maurois, Ariel, 1924

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Virtue is its own revenge. – E.Y. Harburn

Virtue would not travel so far if vanity did not keep her company. – François VI de la Rochefoucault (1613–1680)

Sin is commitable in thought, word or deed; so is virtue. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us. – Robert S. Lynd

The excess of virtue is a vice. – Greek Proverb

They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny a sun because it is not always day. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. – George Orwell

It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays. – Edith Sitwell