This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or self-esteem from swelling into insolence. A thousand incivilities may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected, without any remorse of conscience or reproach from reason." -
"Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it." - David Starr Jordan
"Rarely they rise by virtue’s aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"The one and only nobility is virtue." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"The thirst for fame is much greater than that for virtue; for who would embrace virtue itself if you take away its rewards." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain." - Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
"It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny
"Subjectivity is the truth. By virtue of the relationship subsisting between the eternal truth and the existing individual, the paradox came into being. Let us now go further, let us suppose that the eternal essential truth is itself a paradox. How does the paradox come into being? By putting the eternal essential truth into juxtaposition with existence. Hence when we posit such a conjunction with the truth itself, the truth becomes a paradox. The eternal truth has come into being in time: this is the paradox." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"Virtue must be the result of self-culture; the gods do not take pupils." - Madame de Krüdener, Baroness Barbara Juliane von Krüdener
"We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a quiet conscience, without possessing virtue." - Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert
"We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a calm conscience without possessing virtue." - Saint Lambert or Landebertus, aka Lambert of Maastricht NULL
"The whole future is doubtless determined; but since we know not what it is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we must do our duty, according to the reason that God has given us and according to the rules that he has prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet mind, and leave to God himself the care for the outcome. For he will never fail to do that which shall be the best, not only in general but also in particular, for those who have true confidence in him, that is, a confidence composed of true piety, a lively faith and fervent charity, by virtue of which we will, as far as in us lies, neglect nothing appertaining to our duty and his service." -
"We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack." - Bruno Lessing, pseudonymn for Randolph Edgar Block
"A person is a success if he works on the trait of sincerely desiring other people’s success. It is easy to talk as if you wish someone success but inwardly hope he fails. In general you should know that without hard work and wisdom it is impossible to reach any virtue, and you will remain with your natural tendencies and behavior." - Yechezkail Levenstein
"To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it." - Walter Lippmann
"The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth." - Walter Lippmann
"All virtue lies in a power of denying our own desires where reason does not authorize them." - John Locke
"The most precious of all possessions, is power over ourselves; power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, to front danger; power over pleasure and pain; power to follow convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn; the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness an storms. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations; he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything." - John Locke
"Man is loved mainly because of two virtue: courage first, loyalty second." - Gaius Lucilius
"The virtue of benevolence... is of so comprehensive a nature, that it contains the principle of every moral duty." - Catharine Macaulay Graham, born Catharine Sawbridge
"Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish." - David Mallet, also David Malloch
"Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew himself, or his own virtue." - David Mallet, also David Malloch
"An ardent love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it seems highly probably that the same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of character could not be generated without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral evil." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"Since man is endowed with intelligence and determines his own ends, it is up to him to put himself in tune with the ends necessarily demanded by his nature. This means that there is, by very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act in order to attune itself to the necessary ends of the human being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that." - Jacques Maritain
"All lies disgrace a gentleman, white or black... it becomes as it were a sort of virtue." - Frederick Marryat
"I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vainglory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue." - Jean Baptiste Massillon
"What keeps persons down in the world, besides lack of capacity, is not a philosophical contempt of riches or honors, but thoughtlessness and improvidence, a love of sluggish torpor, and of present gratification. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth - the goods of the mind to those of fortune - that they take no thought for the morrow; but from want of forethought and stern self-command. The restless, ambitious man too often directs these qualities to an unworthy object; the contented man is generally deficient in the qualities themselves. The one is a stream that flows too often in a wrong channel, and needs to have its course altered, the other is a stagnant pool." -
"Pardon is the virtue of victory." - Guiseppe Mazzini
"A man's virtue is his memorial: the evilly-reputed one suffers oblivion." - Mentuhotep, also known as Montuhotep NULL
"Every duty brings its peculiar delight, every denial its appropriate compensation, every thought its recompense, every love its elysium, every cross its crown; pay goes with performance as effect with cause. Meanness overreaches itself; vice vitiates whoever indulges it; the wicked wrong their own souls; generosity greatens; virtue exalts; charity transfigures; and holiness is the essence of angelhood. God does not require us to live on credit; he pays us what we earn as we earn it, good or evil, heaven or hell, according to our choice." - Arundell Charles St. John-Mildmay
"The virtue lies in the struggle, not the prize." - Richard Milnes, fully Baron Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton
"Birth is nothing without virtue, and we have no claim to share in the glory of our ancestors unless we strive to resemble them." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"I maintain, in truth, that with a smile we should instruct our youth, be very gentle when we have to blame, and not to put them in fear of virtue's name." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"Vices are often hid under the name of virtue, and the practice of them followed by the worst consequences. I have seen ladies indulge their own ill-humor by being very rude and impertinent, and think they deserve approbation by saying, “I love to speak the truth.”" - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
"Confidence in another man's virtue, is no slight evidence of one's own." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. But yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the philosopher, who placed in it the sovereign good, and held that it was in its power to make us wise and content. That I do not believe, nor what others have said, that knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Knowledge is the mother of all virtue; all vice proceeds from ignorance." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne