#virtue

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. ↗

— Theodore Hesburgh

#experts #practicing #us #virtue

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble? ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#money #politicians #sparta #valor #virtue

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better. ↗

— Edsger Wybe DIJKSTRA

#elegance #simple #simplicity #virtue #education

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#conduct #double-standards #empowerment #equality #gender

I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose. ↗

— Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

#good-works #vicomte-de-valmont #virtue #experience

Life 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

#hope #life #thankfulness #virtue #faith

The scholar does not consider gold and jade to be precious treasures, but loyalty and good faith. ↗

— Confucius

#loyalty #precious-things #treasures #value #virtues

True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory. ↗

— Jonathan Edwards

#virtue #faith

In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue - it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection. ↗

— Robert Farrar Capon

#god #jesus #sin #virtue #faith

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well ↗

— Charles Colson

#faith #government #virtue #faith