Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,
Born where Heav'n's influence scarce can penetrate.
In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,
They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,
Content to dwell in decencies forever.
There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.
O let us still the secret joy partake,
To follow virtue even for virtue's sake.
Virtus, etiamsi quosdam impetus a natura sumit, tamen perficienda doctrina est.
Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education.
Nihil tam alte natura constituit quo virtus non possit eniti.
Nature has placed nothing so high that virtue can not reach it.
Divitiarum et formse gloria fluxa atque fragilis;
virtus clara seternaque habetur.
The glory of riches and of beauty is frail
and transitory; virtue remains bright and eternal.
Sallust—Catilina. I.
Marcet sine adversario virtus.
Virtue withers away if it has no opposition.
Seneca—De Providentia. II.
Virtus secundum naturam est; vitia inimica et
infesta sunt.
Virtue is according to nature; vices are hostile and dangerous.
Seneca—Epistles. L.
To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 153.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
My heart laments that virtue cannot live
Out of the teeth of emulation.
Julius Cæsar. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 13.
According, to his virtue let us use him,
With all respect and rites of burial.
Julius Cæsar. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 76.
His virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off .
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 7. L. 18.
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{{Hoyt quote
| num = 15
| text = Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
| author =
| work = Measure for Measure.
| place = Act III. Sc. 1. L. 215.
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}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = The trumpet of his own virtues.
| author =
| work = Much Ado About Nothing.
| place = Act V. Sc. 2. L. 87.
| topic =
| page = 838
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>I hold it ever,
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.
Explorant adversa viros. Perque aspera dura
Nititur ad laudem virtus interrita cllvo.
Adversity tries men; but virtue struggles
after fame regardless of the adverse heights.
Silius Itaucus—Punka. IV. 605.
Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces.
Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.
Virtue often trips and falls on the sharp-edged rock of poverty.
Virtue, the greatest of all monarchies.
Non tamen adeo virtutum sterile seculum, ut
non et bona exempla prodiderit.
Yet the age was not so utterly destitute of
virtues but that it produced some good examples.
Tacitus—Annales. Bk. I. 2.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began.
What, what is virtue, but repose of mind,
A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm;
Above the reach of wild ambition's wind,
Above those passions that this world deform
And torture man.
