We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
Plato

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.
Plato

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
Karl Marx

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.
Saint Augustine

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.
Leo Tolstoy

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
Voltaire

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

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
Voltaire

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Voltaire

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.
William Blake

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
Niccolo Machiavelli

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
James Madison

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus Aurelius

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Marcus Aurelius

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
George Orwell

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
Plutarch

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
Blaise Pascal