#virtues

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#generous #most #proudest #strangest #true

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues. ↗

— Plutarch

#few #many #sufficient #vices #virtues

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one's own efforts. ↗

— Thomas Paine

#efforts #encourage #endeavor #others #own

Even a pacifist should admire the military virtues. ↗

— John Keegan

#even #military #pacifist #should #virtues

Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the fucking rules. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#good #hell #virtues #life

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us. ↗

— Francis John McConnell

#opposed #patriotism #recognizes #those #type

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#rivers #sea #self-interest #virtues

Chinese culture has a lot of virtues that are tremendously valuable to not only us as Asian-Americans, but also the world in general. ↗

— Martin Yan

#chinese #chinese culture #culture #general #lot

[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#duty #virtues #writers #beauty

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

— Confucius

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