Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
True virtue is nothing else but living in accordance with reason.
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming of that which the wicked man does in actual life.
The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others,—existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.
The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.
The most virtuous women have in them something which is never chaste.
The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
Rank is nothing without virtue.[La naissance n’est rien où la vertu n’est pas.]
