Pastoral Resources

And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.

I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.

I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.

In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.

Tolerance it a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbors of tolerance are apathy and weakness.

There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.

Tenderness is a virtue.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.