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• A virtue is a characteristic of a person which supports individual moral excellence and collective well being. Wikipedia
• Virtue: A quality considered morally good or desirable in a person.  Oxford Dictionary  
• Virtue: A good moral quality in a person, or the general quality of being morally good.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Virtue: Conformity of one’s life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude. Dictionary.com
• Virtue: Conformity to a standard of right.  Merriam Webster
• Goodness,  Values,  Principles,  Ideals,  Purity,  Goodness,  Morality and ethics,  Sin,  Vice,  Immorality

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Certain virtues are valued and respected in just about all cultures     

• Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. Howard Gardner  
• …there is astonishing convergence across the millennia and across cultures about virtue and strength. Confucius, Aristotle, Aquinas, the Bushido samurai code, the Bhagavad- Gita, and other venerable traditions disagree on the details, but all of these codes include six core virtues: Wisdom and knowledge, Courage, Love and humanity, Justice, Temperance and Spirituality. Happiness is these virtues in action. Martin Seligman  

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Virtue has great worth and value

• The most precious treasure is virtue. Buddha  
• It matters not from what stock we are descended so long as we have virtue; for that alone is true Nobility. Wellins Calcott
• Virtue has a secret dignity, even with those that ridicule it. Norman Macdonald  
• Every deed of dishonor, every victim of vice, every ghastly spectacle of crime, is an eloquent testimony to the need and the worth of virtue. H.  Chapin  
• The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys. Charles Caleb Colton  
• Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. Buddha
• With virtue you can’t be entirely poor; without virtue you can’t really be rich.  Chinese Proverb  
• Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.  William Shakespeare  

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Virtue brings great rewards…     

• Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains. Charles Caleb Colton  
• Virtue makes us appear amiable to others; vice, contemptible even to ourselves. Norman Macdonald  
• He who sows virtue reaps glory. Leonardo da Vinci  
• A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. William Shakespeare  
• When even one virtue becomes our nature, the mind becomes clean and tranquil. Then there is no need to practice meditation; we will automatically be meditating always.  Swami Satchidananda  
• The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear. Confucius  
• Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man. Thomas Carlyle
• Virtue is harmony.  Pythagoras  
• Virtue is reason which has become energy. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel  

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… including happiness…     

• Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.  Aristotle   
• Virtue is the conformity of our affections and actions with the public good, or the voluntary production of the greatest happiness in ourselves and others. Wellins Calcott  
• If virtue promises good fortune and tranquillity and happiness, certainly also the progress towards virtue is progress towards each of these things. Epictetus  
• There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness. George Washington  
• Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue.  John Webster  
• Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.  William S. Burroughs  
• The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement….  Aristotle  
• Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. Joseph Smith Jr.  
• Happiness

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… and strength to the soul     

• The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys. Epictetus  
• Virtue is the health, true state, natural complexion of the Soul. Benjamin Whichcote
• Strength,  Soul

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True virtue is expressed through action, not simply talked about     

• There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other. Charles Caleb Colton  
• As you do not sweeten your mouth by saying honey, so you do not grow virtuous by merely talking of virtue. Ivan Panin
• Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it. David Starr Jordan  
• A value in action is a virtue. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it. Thomas Jefferson  
• These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions … The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life. Aristotle  
• All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. Theodore M. Hesburgh  
• Action

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True virtue is practiced and exercised repeatedly     

• The more we use wisdom and virtue, the more they are our own, and the more we have of them. Benjamin Whichcote  
• Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make them habitual. Thomas Jefferson
• Most of our virtues are gouty from lack of exercise. Austin O’Malley
• It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions. Aristotle  
• To make one good action succeed another, is the perfection of goodness. Ali Ibn-Abi- Talib  
• Goodness is a process of becoming, not of being. What we do over and over again is what we become in the end. Joan Chittister  
• Practice

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True virtue is enduring     

• Virtue wears well in any garb. Edward Counsel  
• The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal. Sallust
• 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

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True virtue comes from within rather than social pressure or threat of punishment     

• Many a man gets a big reputation for Virtue and Morality, when if the truth were known, the poor boob was simply scared of getting caught. Robert Elliott Gonzales  
• The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue. William Hazlitt
• The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him. William Hazlitt  
• Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised. Osamu Dazai  

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True virtue is not concerned with impressing or gaining reward…     

• As the flower, when plucked for enjoyment, begins to wither, so does virtue practiced for reward begin to vanish. Ivan Panin  
• There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed. Norman Macdonald
• There is nothing we abhor so much as to have to be virtuous in private. Abraham Miller  
• That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert. Charles Caleb Colton  
• Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company.  François de la Rochefoucauld  
• To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote. Benjamin Franklin  
• The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.  Ralph Waldo Emerson  
• The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.  Plato  
• The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.  Jawaharlal Nehru  
• We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.  La Rochefoucauld  
• Approval seeking

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… but is practiced for its own reward     

• Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward. Jeremy Taylor  
• The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. Ralph Waldo Emerson  
• Virtue is its own reward. There’s a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.  Sir John Vanbrugh  
• Virtue is its own reward.  Marcus Tullius Cicero  

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True virtue is never cold or forced…     

• Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.   Denis Diderot  
• Some people have an idea that virtue exists only where the blood is cold. Lewis F. Korns  
• I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.  Carl Jung  
• 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  
• Some folks wear their halos much too tight.

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… but is inspired by the warm qualities of love and kindness     

• Goodness is love in action, love with its hand to the plow, love with the burden on its back, love following his footsteps who went about continually doing good. James Hamilton  
• Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. Saul Bellow  
• That best portion of good people’s lives, their little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. William Wordsworth  
• Love,  Kindness

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True virtue stands up to the storm of temptation     

• It is easy enough to be virtuous when nothing tempts you to stray; when without or within no voice of sin is luring your soul away. But it is only a negative virtue until it is tried by fire. For the soul that is worth the treasures of the earth is the soul that resists desire.  Ella Wheeler Wilcox  
• Virtue is insufficient temptation.  George Bernard Shaw  
• Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.  Isadora Duncan  
• What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. Voltaire  
• Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.  Laurence Hope Nicolson  
• The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life. Sigmund Freud  
• 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
• To struggle for virtue, is to be virtuous. Ivan Panin  
• Temptation

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True virtue is motivated by principle, not simply a custom or habit     

• They that are virtuous from principle may receive confidence in every capacity; but they that are so from custom or habit, are capable of trust only in matters of ordinary and settled occurrence. Norman Macdonald  
• Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we have made it our duty to exercise them that if we come to engage in an activity of a different kind, it catches us off guard and without the slightest awareness that it might involve the application of those same virtues. Marcel Proust  
• 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  
• What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man. Deanna Raybourn  
• Principles,   Habit

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The practice of true virtue is rare but this only increases its value     

• The great reason why false virtues pass so well in the world is, that true ones are so seldom near to compare them with. Fulke Greville  
• Virtue has more admirers than followers. Norman Macdonald  
• All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. Theodore M. Hesburgh
• To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg  
• Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.  Mark Twain  
• There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.  Henry David Thoreau  
• Virtue, like beauty, is commonly only skin deep. Austin O’Malley  

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To be virtuous, you don’t have to be an angel or saint     

• A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint. Albert Schweitzer  
• Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint. Henry Ward Beecher  
• What, after all, is a halo? It’s only one more thing to keep clean.   Christopher Fry  
• Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos  
• I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.  Mark Twain  
• Water which is too pure has no fish.  Ts’ai Ken T’an  
• Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.  Samuel Butler  

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In fact, many would argue that virtue can be taken to excess     

• Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! Charles Dickens  
• The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.  Samuel Butler  
• Some folks wear their halos much too tight.
• The excess of virtue is a vice.  Greek Proverb  
• Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. Adam Smith
• 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  
• On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.  George Orwell  
• Excess

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Often our virtues and vices are wedded and it’s the combination of the two that gives us our unique strengths     

• Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. Nikola Tesla  
• Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues. Hugh Prather  
• There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. Oliver Goldsmith
• The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can’t separate them. They’re wedded.   Henry Miller  
• Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.  Samuel Butler  
• The vices of some men are magnificent.  Charles Lamb  
• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. Abraham Lincoln  
• I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.  Mark Twain  
• Vice

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Focus on developing and harnessing your virtues, not fixating on fixing all your vices     

• The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. Martin Seligman  
• Persons are judged to be great because of the positive qualities they possess, not because of the absence of faults. John Fitzgerald Kennedy  
• Focus on your potential instead of your limitations. Alan Loy McGinnis  
• It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use. Henning Mankell  

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Aspire to virtue     

• Let virtue be the mantle of thy conduct. Edward Counsel  
• The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth. L.M. Montgomery
• Therefore I will aspire and tend to virtue, And steep myself in it with great devotion. Shantideva
• You have to choose the best, every day, without compromise…guided by your own virtue and highest ambition. Philippa Gregory  
• Think no vice so small that you may commit it, and no virtue so small that you may over look it.  Confucius  

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Use your virtues in the service of something larger than you are     

• Use your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are. Martin Seligman  
• Just as well-being needs to be anchored in strengths and virtues, these in turn must be anchored in something larger. Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life. Martin Seligman  
• When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity. Martin Seligman
• Purpose

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Reflect often on virtue, letting it lift your thoughts     

• The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. Marcus Aurelius  
• As a good tree produces good fruit; even so does a virtuous soul produce pure thoughts. William Scott Downey  
• Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.  Holy Bible: King James Version  
• Minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues. Plotinus
• You must cease from looking at human mistakes and look at successes; cease from seeing faults and see virtues. Wallace D. Wattles  
• Reflection

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Turn virtue into a mental habit through repeated practice     

• Neuroplasticity has shown our brain changes with experience and we get good at what we practice. Willoughby Britton
• Think of qualities like kindness, compassion and generosity, not as innate qualitues that you have or don’t have, but as skills you can cultivate through mental practice and training. Willoughby Britton  
• Habit,  Practice

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Appreciate virtue in others and let it inspire you     

• Be open to beauty and excellence. Allow yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue.   Sonja Lyubomirsky  
• A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him. Brendan Francis
• You must cease from looking at human mistakes and look at successes; cease from seeing faults and see virtues. Wallace D. Wattles  
• That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as anothers. We see so much only as we possess.  Henry David Thoreau  
• The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.  Samuel Johnson  
• A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others. Francis Bacon  
• Inspiration

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Induce virtue in others by seeing the best in them     

• If we would induce others to act virtuously, it will prove more effectual to show them their capacities than to expose their weakness–to attract them by a fairer ideal than to terrify them by pictures of misery and shame. E.H. Chapin
• Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.  Confucius

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Make a virtue of your peculiarities     

• There’s a point… when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Ursula K. Le Guin  

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Virtue is best learned in the home     

• The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home. David O. McKay  
• The home is the chief school of human virtues. William Ellery Channing  
• There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained. Winston Churchill  
• Home

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Deep awareness automatically brings virtue

• According to great masters, there is no sin and there is no virtue. There is only one thing: that is awareness. If you are aware, you can do anything you want and it is not sin. If you are not aware, you may do so-called virtuous acts, but there is no virtue in them. Out of unconsciousness virtue cannot blossom. It blossoms only when you are full of light, full of love, full of consciousness. Rajneesh
• Many times people ask me, “What is sin and what is virtue? And how to decide?” If you decide your decision will be wrong. If you choose you will be wrong. All choice is wrong. There is no way to decide. There is no need to decide what is sin and what is virtue. You only need a transparent mind, a clarity, a thoughtless mind, a no-mind, a mirror-like consciousness. In that consciousness whatsoever happens is virtue. In that consciousness whatsoever cannot happen is sin. Rajneesh
• Awareness

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Some virtues are best developed though adversity     

• Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.  Francis Bacon  
• Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity. Joseph Addison  
• Most virtues and flowers bloom best on poor soil. Austin O’Malley  
• Adversity

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Some virtues are nothing but disguised vices     

• Skepticism has become a virtue. Cynicism and demand for proof has become enlightened thought. Is it any wonder that humans now feel more depressed and defeated than they have at any point in human history? Dan Brown  
• Let us be done with thinking poverty is a virtue. It is a common vice.  Catherine Ponder  
• There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. Erich Fromm  
• Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  
• We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct. François de La Rochefoucauld  
• The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.  Herbert Samuel  
• The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.  Bergen Evans  
• We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.  Alexander Comfort  
• Many virtues are but disguised vices. Norman Macdonald  
• Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.  Lord Chesterfield  
• Vice

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Merely abhorring and resisting vice is not a virtue     

• The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.  Bergen Evans  
• It isn’t enough to stand up and fight darkness. You’ve got to stand apart from it, too. You’ve got to be different from it. Jim Butcher
• The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.  Herbert Samuel  

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Some believe that people are not virtuous by nature     

• Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art. Seneca
• The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Men’s evil manners live in brass, their virtues we write in water.  William Shakespeare  
• Virtue craves a steep and thorny path. Michel de Montaigne  
• To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.  William Penn  
• He who hates vice hates men.  John Morley  
• There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. Michel de Montaigne  
• Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything. Samuel Johnson  
• Vice is man’s nature: virtue is a habit–or a mask. William Hazlitt

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… and that virtue can only be gained through continuous struggle     

• I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency. Tennessee Williams  
• Our virtues are like crystals hidden in rocks. No man shall find them by any soft ways, but by the hammer and by fire. Henry Ward Beecher  
• There is no road or ready way to virtue. Sir Thomas Browne  
• To struggle for virtue, is to be virtuous. Ivan Panin  
• Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.  Jean Jacques Rousseau  
• Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.  Don Marquis

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Others believe that there is inherent goodness in us all and virtue is about tapping into that     

• Virtue sounds lofty, but it’s actually down to earth. It simply means living from your innate goodness, guided by principle. When you are virtuous no matter what other people do, their behavior is not controlling you. Rick Hanson
• You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you. Eckhart Tolle  
• Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig. Marcus Aurelius  
• When you learn to embrace your self with a sense of appreciation and affection, you begin to glimpse the goodness and light that is in you and gradually you will realize that you are worthy of respect from yourself. John O’Donohue  
• Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own good. Pablo Casals  
• Spirituality is natural goodness. God is not a person; God is a presence personified in us. Spirituality is not a thing; it is the atmosphere of God’s Presence, goodness, truth, and beauty. Ernest Holmes
• Goodness

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• We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat. John Steinbeck  
• Virtue is admirable, but boring. John Twelve Hawks  
• Virtue has its own reward, but no box office. Mae West  
• It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.  Edith Sitwell  
• Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.  Edward Dahlberg  
• Virtue has never been as respectable as money.  Mark Twain  

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Virtues are connected and should not become isolated from each other     

• The virtues are a chain; and, if you break one link, the whole chain is useless. Austin O’Malley  
• Content not thyself that thou art virtuous in the general: for one link being wanting, the chain is defective. William Penn
• The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. G.K. Chesterton
• Connectedness

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The most important virtues are those most in request for daily use     

• The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons. Aristotle  
• The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest. Samuel Smiles  

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Courage, the foundation of all virtues

• Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundations that underlies and gives reality to all other virtue and personal values. Rollo May  
• Courage is not simply another virtue, it is the true form each and every virtue takes when put into practice. Michael Rawls
• Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.  S. Lewis  
• Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others. Aristotle
• Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount. Clare Boothe Luce  
• Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. Maya Angelou  
• One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. Maya Angelou  
• The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them. H. Lawrence  
• The great virtue of those who seek the spiritual path is courage. Paulo Coelho  
• Thus just as one’s heart, by pumping blood to one’s arms, legs, and brain enables all the other physical organs to function, so courage makes possible all the psychological virtues. Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue.  Rollo May  
• You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. Aristotle
• Courage

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Gratitude

• Gratitude is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all others. Cicero
• The virtue of gratitude directly touches the ultimate foundations of human existence, for there is hardly another quality of man that is so suited to reveal the state of his inner spiritual and moral health as his capacity to be grateful. Otto Friedrich Bollnow  
• Lfe without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road. John Henry Jowett  
• Gratitude

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Patience

• The secret code of success is patience, a virtue that cannot be replaced. It takes time to build great dreams.  Bernard Kelvin Clive  
• Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement. Vera Nazarian  
• Patience

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Self-discipline

• We need to promote self-discipline. My favorite social psychologist, Roy Baumeister, believes it is the queen of all the virtues, the strength that enables the rest of the strengths. Martin Selegman
• Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principle luster. Adam Smith
• Self-discipline

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Resourcefulness

• Resourcefulness is not a means of coping with deprivation; it can be a virtue that opens the door to greater accomplishment. John Baldoni  
• Resourcefulness

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A love of truth

• To love truth is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. John Locke
• Truth

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Moderation

• Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all the virtues. Thomas Fuller  
• Moderation

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Honesty

• I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. George Washington  
• Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.  Ayn Rand  
• Honesty

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Politeness

• Now there’s a poor man’s virtue if ever there was one. What’s so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it’s easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what’s left when you’ve failed at everything else. People with ambition don’t give a damn what other people think about them. Diane Setterfield  
• Politeness

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Freedom

• The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.  Adam Gopnik
• Freedom

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Cheerfulness

• Cheerfulness is a very great help in fostering the virtue of charity. Cheerfulness itself is a virtue. Lawrence G. Lovasik  
• Cheerfulness

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Peace

• Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice. Baruch Spinoza
• Peace

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Sincerity     

• The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. Anatole France  

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Work

• There can be no richer man or woman than the individual who has found his or her labor of love. Personal fulfillment through the virtue of work is the highest form of desire. Work is the conduit between the supply and the demand of all human needs, the forerunner of human progress, and the medium by which the imagination is given the wings of action. A labor of love is exalted because it provides joy and self- expression to those who perform it.  Dennis Kimbro  
• Temperance and labor are the two best virtues. Labor whets the appetite, temperance curbs it.
• Work

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Humility

• Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues: hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance. Augustine of Hippo  
• Humility is the highest of all virtues. You can destroy your egotism by developing this virtue alone.  You can influence people.  You can become a magnet to attract the world.  It must be genuine.  Feigned humility is hypocrisy.  Robert Collier  
• Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self. T. S. Eliot
• Humility is the mother of all virtues. Humility says we are not in control, principles are in control, therefore we submit ourselves to principles. Pride says that we are in control, and since our values govern our behavior, we can simply do life our way. Stephen Covey  
• Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue. Saint John Chrysostom
• Humility is to the virtues what the chain is to the rosary: remove the chain, and all the beads escape; take away humility, and all the virtues disappear.  the Cure d’Ars  
• Humility, that low, sweet root from which all heavenly virtues shoot. Thomas Moore  
• It is vain to gather virtues without humility, for the spirit of God delighteth to dwell in the hearts of the humble. Erasmus
• Take away humility and all the other virtues disappear
• The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue. Confucius  
• There is but one road to lead to God–humility; all other ways would only lead astray, even were they fenced in with all virtues. Nicholas Boileau
• To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect. Lao Tzu  
• Humility

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Self-respect  

• Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue. John Herschel  
• Self-respect

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Turning adversity into challenge and a stepping stone     

• Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Charles Caleb Colton  
• Adversity,  Challenge

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Equanimity     

• Equanimity is essentially an umbrella for our most coveted human virtues: integrity, honesty, empathy, authenticity, patience, compassion. Danielle Robinson  
• In Buddhism, equanimity is one of the Four Immeasurables or four great virtues (with compassion, loving kindness, and sympathetic joy) that the Buddha taught his disciples to cultivate. Barbara O’Brien  
• Equanimity

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Service     

• Service is the virtue that distinguished the great of all time and which they will be remembered by. It places a mark of nobility upon its disciples. It is the dividing line which separates the two great groups of the world – those who help and those who hinder, those who lifet and those who lean, those who contribute and those who only consume.  How much better is it to give than to receive.  Bryant S. Hinckley  
• Service

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Loyalty     

• Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue – perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one. Milan Kundera  
• Loyalty

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Tolerance     

• Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. Rene Dubois  
• Tolerance

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Knowledge     

• Knowledge is the mother of all virtue; all vice proceeds from ignorance.
• Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another. Joseph Addison  
• 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  
• Knowledge

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Curiosity     

• The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity. Anatole France  
• Curiosity

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Intuition     

• The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition. Baruch Spinoza
• Intuition

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Control of the mind     

• To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. Buddha   
• Self-control

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Modesty     

• Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.  John Kenneth Galbraith  
• Modesty and unselfishness – these are virtues which men praise – and pass by.  André Maurois  
• Modesty

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Dealing justly     

• All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Aristotle  
• Justice

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Compassion     

• It is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, which moves the world. Thiruvalluvar  
• Compassion

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Common sense     

• Common sense has become an uncommon virtue. Amit Abraham  
• Common sense

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Temperance     

• Temperance and labor are the two best virtues. Labor whets the appetite, temperance curbs it.
• Temperance

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More important virtues     

• Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement–these are the martial virtues which must command success. Austin Phelps  
• The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue. Confucius  
• Thirteen virtues necessary for true success: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. Benjamin Franklin
• To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. Confucius
• But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self- control. Galatians 5:23, 24  Bible  
• Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity. William Menninger  
• To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.  Martin Seligman  
• Integrate these principles and habits deep within your nature; into your basic character: integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, simplicity, modesty. Stephen Covey
• If you look at all enduring philosophies, religions and thoughts, you will find principles such as integrity, compassion, trust, honesty, accountability and others at their core. Stephen Covey  
• Real success requires respect for and faithfulness to the highest human values– honesty, integrity, self- discipline, dignity, compassion, humility, courage, personal responsibility, courtesy, and human service. Michael DeBakey, M.D.  
• Humility is the mother of all virtues: the humble in spirit progress and are blessed because they willingly submit to higher powers and try to live in harmony with natural laws and universal principles. Courage is the father of all virtues; we need great courage to lead our lives by correct principles and to have integrity in the moment of choice.  Stephen Covey  
• The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth. Albert Einstein
• Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness. R.J. Palacio  
• Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.  Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.  Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.  Lao Tzu  
• I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men. Lao Tzu  
• Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge are not infused into us from without. Mencius
• A complete list of virtues

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• A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. Ralph Waldo Emerson    
• Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady except that a newspaper can always print a retraction. Adlai E. Stevenson
• At my age patience is not a virtue it’s a luxury.   Erma Bombeck
• Blushing: The color of virtue.
• Chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition. Alexander Comfort M.D. Ph.D.
• Etiquette: A convenient code of conduct which makes lying a virtue and snobbishness a righteous deed.
• Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed. Ambrose Bierce
• He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. Winston Churchill    
• Her virtue was that she said what she thought her vice – that what she thought didn’t amount to much.   Peter Ustinov
• Hospitality, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging. Ambrose Bierce
• If you live long enough the venerability factor creeps in; first you get accused of things you never did and later credited for virtues you never had. F. Stone
• In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo. Marilyn Monroe    
• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. Abraham Lincoln    
• It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. Voltaire
• Many a man gets a big reputation for Virtue and Morality, when if the truth were known, the poor boob was simply scared of getting caught. Robert Elliott Gonzales
• Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues. Kahlil Gibran    
• No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues. Bertrand Russell
• Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue. Ambrose Bierce
• Punctuality is the virtue of the bored. Evelyn Waugh
• She lived a life of virtue and died of the cholera morbus caused by eating green fruit in hope of a blessed immortality. Epitaph
• The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds. Samuel Butler
• The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues. Elizabeth Taylor    
• Virtue has its own reward, but no box office. Mae West    
• Virtue is insufficient temptation. George Bernard Shaw    
• Virtue is its own punishment. Aneurin Bevan
• Virtue is learned at a mother’s knee; vice at other joints.
• Virtue: Lack of opportunity.
• What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. Voltaire    
• When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you’re older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed – it evens itself out. Casey Stengel
• Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything. Samuel Johnson

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• Lists of virtues (e.g. Confucian virtues, Epicurean virtues, Western Cardinal virtues etc.)

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