Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.
Felix Adler

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.
Jean de La Fontaine

Persevere in virtue and diligence.
Titus Maccius Plautus

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
William Hazlitt

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
William Hazlitt

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
William Hazlitt

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Alfred North Whitehead

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Joseph A. Schumpeter

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.
Walter Scott

Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.
Paracelsus

Modesty is the color of virtue.
Diogenes of Sinope

If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.
Leo Strauss

We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.
Wilhelm Wundt

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.
Jeremy Taylor

Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
Dalton Trumbo

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
Petrarch

It is safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.
Sydney Smith

Too much virtue can be criminal.
Jean Racine

I have pushed virtue to outright brutality.
Jean Racine