May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,
that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives
but bad receipts for payment in the lower world.
Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go,
all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!
--
Book IX, line 402Nikos Kazantzakis
» Nikos Kazantzakis - all quotes »
Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.
Sallustius (or Sallust)
Omnium rerum domina, virtus. Virtue is the mistress of all things. Virtue is the master of all things. Therefore a nation that should never do wrong must necessarily govern the world. The might of virtue, the power of virtue, is not a very common topic, not so common as it should be.
John Adams
If the attractive virtue of the moon extends as far as the earth, it follows with greater reason that the attractive virtue of the earth extends as far as the moon and much farther; and, in short, nothing which consists of earthly substance anyhow constituted although thrown up to any height, can ever escape the powerful operation of this attractive virtue.
Johannes Kepler
Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.
Sri Aurobindo
Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Kazantzakis, Nikos
Kean, Tom
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