So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.
Edward Dahlberg

So, to praise others for their virtues can but encourage one's own efforts.
Nagarjuna

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
Sydney Smith

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
Joseph Addison

Sometimes we may learn more from a man's errors, than from his virtues.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
Walter Lippmann

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.
Anatole France

Tact is one of the first mental virtues, the absence of it is fatal to the best talent.
William Gilmore Simms

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
Walter Scott

That future depends on the values of self-government, our sense of duty, loyalty, self-confidence and regard for the common good. We are a diverse country, and getting more diverse. And these virtues are what keep this great country together.
Jeff Miller

The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They're the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They're active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.
Thomas Perry

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
Rene Descartes

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
Aristotle

The home is the chief school of human virtues.
William Ellery Channing

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
Aristotle

The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.
Guillaume Apollinaire

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

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
Michel de Montaigne

The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
Larry Wall