Quotes to inspire and reflect

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower.

The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

Every man has his own vocation. The talent is the call.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

Human vitality is so exuberant that in the sorriest desert it still finds a pretext for glowing and trembling.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there’s a spectacle.

No man sees far; the most see no farther than their noses.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

There is a capacity of virtue in us, arid there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.

The glory that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot.

The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.

Even virtue followed beyond reason’s rule / May stamp the just man knave, the sage a fool.

The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

Virtue is despised if it be seen in a threadbare cloak.

He hath no mean portion of virtue that loveth it in another.

The order of things consents to virtue.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

The highest virtue is always against the law.

Who knows his virtue’s name or place, hath none.

Seldom indeed does human virtue rise / From trunk to branch.

The existence of virtue depends entirely upon its use.

If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfil the requirements of that name?

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

Abstract qualities begin / With capitals alway: / The True, the Good, the Beautiful—/Those are the things that pay!

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the nonperformance of base ones.

Virtue is like precious odours,—most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

A state of temperance, sobriety and justice without devotion is a cold, lifeless, insipid condition of virtue, and is rather to be styled philosophy than religion.

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.

Wherever a people has grown savage in arms so that human laws have no longer any place among it, the only powerful means of reducing it is religion.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.