One of the virtues of the NHS. . . it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.
One of the great virtues of our democratic system is that only one of the candidates gets elected.
Spirituality is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practising of virtues - because if you practise a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practised virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised - when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.
A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.
We underestimate the value of patience. It is possible that people might sometimes interrupt our meditation sessions or Dharma study, but they can never take away our opportunity to train in inner virtues such as patience. It is this mental training, rather than outer virtuous activities, that is the essence of Dharma practice.
Royalty consists not in vain pomp, but in great virtues
men love their wives not because of their virtues, but in spite of them.
Faith is trusting Jesus to lead us and going where He leads. What avails it to me to analyze Saratoga water, and to believe in its virtues? I must drink the water if I want its purifying power. And the soul that has not actually drunk of Christ can never be purged from sin.
Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.
Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.
Three key humanist virtues are courage, cognition, and caring - not dependence, ignorance, or insensitivity to the needs of others.
Men have discovered their distinctive virtues and vices through grappling with the perennial dilemmas and demands of love, courage, pride, family, and country-the five paths whose proper ordering gives us the key to the secret of happiness for a man.
In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,--fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.
The praise we seek for our own virtues sometimes tempts us to flatter the imperfections of other men.
Virtues neglected then, adored become, And graces slighted, blossom on the tomb.
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.
If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
You must cease from looking at human mistakes and look at successes; cease from seeing faults and see virtues.