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Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Virtue is a sure anchor.

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

If we had to seek virtue outside of ourselves, that would assuredly be difficult; but as it is within us, it suffices to avoid bad thoughts and to keep our souls turned toward the Lord.

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Ah, Eugénie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.

Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence.

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.

And be on they guard against the good and the just! They would fain curcify those who devise their own virtue -- they hate the lonesome ones.

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.