For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice. – Erwin Schrodinger
There’s no credit in not doing what you don’t want to do. There’s no virtue in not falling, when you’re not tempted. – Gilbert Parker
Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. – Ezra Pound
I shall produce nothing that will offend the proprieties, whether applied to children or grownups. My pictures are turned out with clean hands and, therefore, with a clear conscience which, like virtue, is its own reward. – Fatty Arbuckle
All societies wrestle with the scourge of prejudice, but validating that prejudice in statute makes a virtue of oppression. – Ephraim Mirvis
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made. – Gore Vidal
To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject. – Edmund Husserl
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It’s a spiritual dissipation. – Margaret Deland
Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue. – Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience. – Ninon de L’Enclos
Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn’t amount to much. – Peter Ustinov
Jesus’ life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue. – John Ortberg
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. – Lionel Trilling
Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that’s what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody. – Kirk Douglas
I’ve always been a sucker for any technology engineered primarily for the entertainment of the human race – even such technology as has been disguised as ‘useful’ or ‘improving’ when we all know the real virtue lies in its ability to distract and divert. – Lynn Coady
Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle. – Jonathan Mayhew
