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Virtue   /vˈərtʃu/   Listen
Virtue

noun
1.
The quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.  Synonyms: moral excellence, virtuousness.
2.
Any admirable quality or attribute.  Synonym: merit.
3.
Morality with respect to sexual relations.  Synonyms: chastity, sexual morality.
4.
A particular moral excellence.



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"Virtue" Quotes from Famous Books



... maligned. Unlike her, he has found only a few defenders. Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture of him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels. Bothwell, says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice to be their virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever he might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave company bravely. His high color, while ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... that perhaps after his death many people might speak well of him; that certainly in the little world of Vine-Pits Farm and the Cross Road cottages there would be a natural inclination to exaggerate his few good qualities and be gentle to his innumerable faults; so that a sort of legend of virtue would weave itself about his memory, making him a humble, insignificant, but local saint—to be placed at a respectful distance and yet not too far from the shrine of that great and illustrious saint the late Mr. Barradine. "Of course," people might say, "one was a grand gentleman, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... disparity between the destiny and the nature, we know it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; love is great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic virtue; and to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, submissive in the indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the vulgar, secret in the familiar. It is destructive because it not only closes but contradicts life. Unlikely people die. ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... Ayodhya, and the crowning of Rama in place of Dasa-ratha, who had died of grief during his exile. Finally comes the Uttara-kanda, which relates that Rama, hearing some of the people of Ayodhya spitefully casting aspersions on the virtue of Sita during her imprisonment in the palace of Ravana, gave way to foolish jealousy and banished her to the hermitage of Valmiki, where she gave birth to twin sons, Kusa and Lava; when these boys had grown up, Valmiki taught them the Ramayana and sent them to sing ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... perjurer! but this will wring thee worse than Ixion's wheel, or whips of scorpions!—Ha! ha! Cicero! Cicero!—No! no! Chrea. There are no Gods! no Gods who guard the innocent! no Gods who smile on virtue! no gods! I say, no ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... enjoy the internal religious dissensions in their revolted provinces. Although they had concluded the convention with them as with countries over which they had no pretensions, they had never at heart allowed more virtue to the conjunction "as," which really contained the essence of the treaty, than grammatically belonged to it. Spain still chose to regard the independence of the Seven Provinces as a pleasant fiction to be dispelled when, the truce having expired by its own limitation, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... with perfect unconcern. Parent could not hear what they were saying, but he saw their quiet gestures. His wife's face especially exasperated him. She had assumed a haughty air, the air of a comfortable, devout woman, of an unapproachable, devout woman, sheathed in principles, iron-clad in virtue. They paid their bill and got up from table. Parent then noticed Limousin. He might have been taken for a retired diplomat, for he looked a man of great importance, with his soft white whiskers, the tips of which touched his ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... civilisation by the means (as so commonly happens) of a passing appeal to savage standards. The first was the arrival of a little gentleman from Armenia. He had a fez upon his head and (what nobody counted on) a dagger in his pocket. The hazing was set about in the customary style, and, perhaps in virtue of the victim's head-gear, even more boisterously than usual. He bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out his knife and suddenly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... comparisons designed to show that he merely followed in a well-worn pathway. Yet the similarity of Tolstoy's ideas to those of the author of the "Contrat Social" hardly goes beyond a mutual distrust of Art and Science as aids to human happiness and virtue, and a desire to establish among mankind a true sense of brotherhood. For the rest, the appeals which they individually made to Humanity were as dissimilar as the currents of their lives, and equally dissimilar ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... confreres are more or less tacitly recognizing, that the hopeless and soul-deadening belief of the Materialist (that all the growth of the race, the struggling towards a higher life, the aspirations towards virtue shall absolutely vanish, and leave no trace), is a crushing mental burden which leads to absolute negation; it will show the spiritual nature of man in perfect consistence with the true theories, and as dependent on fundamental laws ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... Ohio town of Dexter stood a house more sagging and dilapidated in appearance than its disreputable fellows. From the foundation the walls converged to the roof, which seemed to hold its place less by virtue of nails and rafters than by faith. The whole aspect of the dwelling, if dwelling it could be called, was as if, conscious of its own meanness, it was shrinking away from its neighbours and into itself. A sickly light gleamed from one of the windows. As the dawn came into the sky, a woman ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man! Yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man. And therefore when he himself tabled the Jews from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... man who had been her husband, having got drunk in a public-house with the money which he had received for her, quarrelled with another man, and receiving a blow under the ear, fell upon the floor, and died of artiflex; and in less than three weeks I was married to Mary Fulcher, by virtue of regular bans. I am told she was legally my property by virtue of my having bought her with a halter round her neck; but, to tell you the truth, I think everybody should live by his trade, and I didn't wish to act shabbily towards our parson, who is a good fellow, and has certainly a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Virtue of the Orders of my General; and I entreat you, Sir, not to doubt, one Moment, but that I am determined to conform myself to them with all the Exactness and Resolution which can be expected from the best Officer.... ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... the prosecution of the peaceable remedy. The second is more decisive. By the act commonly called the replevin law, any person whose goods are seized or detained by the collector for the payment of duties may sue out a writ of replevin, and, by virtue of that writ, the goods are to be restored to him. A writ of replevin is a writ which the sheriff is bound to execute, and for the execution of which he is bound to employ force, if necessary. He may call out the posse, and must do so, if resistance be made. This posse ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... it) that the credit of the whole performance should be assigned to him alone. Let us be just to Robert, even though his merit as a draughtsman has been lost sight of in the fame which the younger brother achieved by virtue of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... to look around for unattached women, to gamble at cards with any poor devil like themselves. Those were most bored who were most virtuous. For them, with an ideal in their souls, there was no possibility of relief (for virtue is not its own reward), unless they were mystics, as some became, who found God good company and needed no other help. They had rare luck, those fellows with an astounding faith which rose above the irony and the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the heart for all the human members Virtue informative, as being that Which to be changed to ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... feast on nectar and ambrosia; they take part in the struggles of the battle field; they marry and are given in marriage. The gods, morally, were no better than their worshipers. They might be represented as deceitful, dissolute, and cruel, but they could also be regarded as upholders of truth and virtue. Even Homer could say, "Verily the blessed gods love not evil deeds, but they reverence justice and the righteous acts ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... comparatively new thing in this country, and is used in place of straw for bedding horses. It is a great absorbent and soaks up much of the urine that, were straw used instead, would be likely to pass off into the drains. To this is ascribed its great virtue in mushroom culture. It should be mixed with loam when ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... next. I mustn't whisper a word about it yet, so false face must hide what the false heart doth know. You'll have to forgive me if I succeed, for nothing is wicked in this world except failure, you know, and a little sin must be a great virtue if it has grown to be big enough, you see. There! How sagacious of me! You didn't know what a philosopher you had in the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... existence, though in a very perishing state. Shortly after he had copied them they fell, owing to the plaster detaching itself from the wall. One of them is taken from the Odyssey, and represents Ulysses and Circe, at the moment when the hero, having drunk the charmed cup with impunity, by virtue of the antidote given him by Mercury, draws his sword and advances to avenge his companions.[17] The goddess, terrified, makes her submission at once, as described by Homer, while her two attendants fly in alarm; yet one of them, with a ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... and foremost step in all knowledge of mankind is the conviction that a man's conduct, taken as a whole, and in all its essential particulars, is not governed by his reason or by any of the resolutions which he may make in virtue of it. No man becomes this or that by wishing to be it, however earnestly. His acts proceed from his innate and unalterable character, and they are more immediately and particularly determined by motives. A man's conduct, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Lane in 1702, was the talk of the enthusiastic town, and the playwright arose from his beer-mugs, his wine-flagons, and his contemplation of ideal Christianity, to find himself famous. He had opened a new vein of satire, and a vein moreover which upheld virtue and laughed to scorn hypocrisy and vice. That was a moral which the dramatists of his epoch seldom taught.[A] And so the people crowded to the theatre, applauded the sentiment of the play, guffawed at the keen wit of the dialogue, and swore that ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... wished-for prey! Soon, soon shall Conquest's fiery foot intrude, Blackening her lovely domes with traces rude. Inevitable hour! 'Gainst fate to strive Where Desolation plants her famished brood Is vain, or Ilion, Tyre might yet survive, And Virtue vanquish all, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... manuscripts the old words, which, in spite of their age, were still strong, and which would have shocked the ears, astonished the eyes, reddened the cheeks and sullied the lips of trousered maidens, and Madame Virtue with three lovers; for certain things must be done to suit the vices of the age, and a periphrase is much more agreeable than the word. Indeed, we are old, and find long trifles, better than the short ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... would prevent shipwreck in the rapids. Tuba conducted them at a rapid rate down the river. It required considerable confidence in his skill not to feel somewhat uneasy as they navigated these roaring waters. They were advised not to speak, lest their talking might diminish the virtue of the medicine; few indeed would have thought of disobeying the orders of the canoe-smasher. One man stood at the head of the canoe, looking out for rocks and telling the steersman the course to take. Often it seemed as if they would be dashed to pieces against the dark rocks jutting out from ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... for one's country as the Lombard boy did, is a great virtue; but you must not neglect the lesser virtues, my son. This morning as you walked in front of me, when we were returning from school, you passed near a poor woman who was holding between her knees a thin, pale child, and who asked alms of you. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... was all the more intense in its nature because it was the first love of a noble heart. Honoria had reverenced in her husband all that she had ever known of manly virtue. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows! on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... those who deserve to suffer, nor, indeed, often for the innocent. I don't think we often find vice punished and virtue rewarded in history and lives—true stories, I mean—as we do ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... cause of suffering humanity. These are golden words which we quote from her own modest notes: "I, however, always loved the good, in childhood desired to do the right, and had no faith in the generally received idea of human depravity." Yes, it was because she believed in human virtue, that she was enabled to accomplish such a wonderful work. She had the inspiration of faith, and entered her life-battle against Slavery with a divine hope, and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... began the very next afternoon. Mrs. Black, having made up her mind that the taking of the Dotts under her wing was a necessity, made a virtue of that necessity and explained to her fellow members of Scarford Chapter that Serena and Daniel were really very nice people. "A little countrified, of course. You must expect that. But they are very kind ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... seemed, at first, so strange to me that those exquisite shapes, replete with grace, and thought, and delicate repose, should grow out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture! But I soon found a parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in every virtue that springs up in miserable ground, and every good thing that has its birth in sorrow and distress. And, looking out of the sculptor's great window, upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the decline of day, but stern and solemn to the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... Pisa, where Madonna masquerades as Ariadne and the angel speaks with the gesture of Hermes, some sentiment of a new sweetness in the world seems to lurk amid all the naive classicism, finding expression at last in such a thing, for instance, as the divine figure of Virtue in the pulpit of the Duomo of Siena, in which some have thought to find French influence, the work of the artists of Chartres and Rheims, visible enough, one might think, in the work of Niccolo's son Giovanni Pisano, whose ivory Statue of Madonna is to-day ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and—but too often—from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... concentrated. And although the framers of the new commonwealth would be too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible principle of exclusion, but on the contrary would in all probability ostentatiously inaugurate the novel constitution by virtue of some abstract plea about as definite and as prodigal of practical effects as the rights of man or the sovereignty of the people, nevertheless I should be astonished were we not to find that the great mass of the nation, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... 2. Martin Jr. arrives at the Pecksniffs 3. Visiting Miss Pinch 4. Todgers Boarding House 5. Truth prevails and Virtue triumphs 6. Jonas entertains his cousins 7. Sairy Gamp (the nurse) 8. Sairy Gamp's corpse 9. There is nothing he don't know 10. Miss Pinch's pudding 11. Sairy Gamp proposes a toast 12. Pecksniff rebuked by Martin, Senior 13. The ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... Josiah, that I have more hope from the madness and folly of the South than I have from the wisdom and virtue of the North? I have read too 'whom the gods would destroy ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... middle life, well taught by the methods in vogue fifty years before, but scarcely in harmony with modern ideals of education. In spite of his perfect manners and unimpeachable character, the Professor, as he was called, was generally understood to hold his position more by virtue of his need and his influence than of his fitness to instruct. He had several young lady assistants who found in teaching the only career open, in Clarendon, to white women ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... may, and is often, added that of defamation, if apart from the dishonor received one's character is besmirched in the bargain. Contumely against parents offends at the same time filial piety; against God and His saints, it is sacrilegious; if provoked by the practice of religion and virtue, it is impious. If perpetrated in deed, it may offend justice properly so called; if it occasion sin in others, it is scandalous; if it drive the victim to excesses of any kind, the guilt thereof is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... Saxons, which, breaking the Roman Empire, deformed the whole face of the world with those ill-features of government, which at this time are become far worse in these western parts, except Venice, which, escaping the hands of the barbarians by virtue of its impregnable situation, has had its eye fixed upon ancient prudence, and is attained to a perfection even beyond ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... to except the cargo from forfeiture was lost, 77 to 39. Another motion by Bidwell may be considered the crucial vote on the whole bill: it was an amendment to the forfeiture clause, and read, "Provided, that no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this act."[60] This resulted in a tie vote, 60 to 60; but the casting vote of the Speaker, Macon of North Carolina, defeated it. New England voted solidly in favor of it, the Middle States stood 4 for and 2 against it, and the six Southern ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... in his life Sobrenski was taken aback, and experienced a new sensation, that of surprise. He looked at her with almost approval. If he was cruel he was also courageous, and able to appreciate the virtue in others. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle; where a grey-headed ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... shall have lust a virtue in the Court, The wayes of sinne be furthered by reward, Panders and Parasites sit in the places Of the ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... agent of the Duke of York, and in the presence of all the people, a formal surrender of all that fine domain. The Dutch had long before conquered and absorbed the Swedes on the Delaware, and the English in turn had conquered the Dutch, and it was by virtue of his charter, giving him a title to all New Netherland, that the duke claimed the territory as his own. The transfer inherited for Penn and his descendants a dispute with the proprietors of Maryland, which might seem incompatible with the views ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... By virtue of your royal decree received by your governor in the past year, concerning the sale of the magistracies and offices of notary, by order of your said governor the following offices were sold, in the usual ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... assumed command of the party in virtue of his superior knowledge, "we must separate and advance from different directions, and be sure, gentlemen, that you don't shoot the niggers. Look well before you. That hollow is a very likely place for one of them to run along, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... could no more amuse myself with writing verse, if I did not print it when written, than with the study of tactics, for which I can never have any real occasion." But our young and ardent friends seemed to entertain a strong impression that the mere pleasure of writing, that is, like virtue, writing for its own sake, was all the mental and rational gratification wise men could desire. Views and times alter, and these richly-endowed young men, in after life, were prompt, and amongst ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... Writers on games declare that Auction Bridge is more of a "gambling" game than ordinary bridge. But hostesses who do not favor "gambling" in any form, had better choose chess as their popular game, for it is the only game from which the element of chance is entirely absent. But bridge, perhaps by virtue of its very element of chance, is to-day one of ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... at all vindictive, easily pleased, perfectly free with whatever little money he had, no greater lover of his school work than of the games, and generally more inclinable to moderate vice than to immoderate virtue. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... For courtesies, though undeserved and great, 1170 No gratitude in felon-minds beget; As tribute to his wit, the churl receives the treat. His praise of foes is venomously nice; So touch'd, it turns a virtue to a vice: "A Greek, and bountiful, forewarns us twice." Seven sacraments he wisely does disown, Because he knows Confession stands for one; Where sins to sacred silence are convey'd, And not for fear, or love, to be betray'd: But he, uncall'd, his patron to control, 1180 Divulged ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... respect by refusing forgiveness for a long while. The religion in which her soul moved and lived—the sternest Protestantism—strengthened and enforced the original convictions and the prejudices of her race; and the natural shame which she had first felt almost disappeared in the violence of her virtue. She even ceased to fear discovery. What did it matter who knew, since she knew? She opened her heart to God. Christ looked down, but he seemed stern and unforgiving. Her Christ was the Christ of her forefathers; and He had not forgiven, because ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... virtue," pleaded Nevil, "watchers generally tell the workers how to do it. I never do. Why don't you tell a gardener ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... and on its distance from it; and may be less or greater at different times, and in different places. It is, therefore, not philosophical to say that all matter is necessarily ponderous, inasmuch as it is a virtue not residing in itself alone, but needs the existence of other matter to call it into action. If an atom were isolated in space it would have no weight. If influenced by other matter, there must be some physical medium to convey the influence, or gravity is not in accordance with ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... any kind; he has been too much with foreigners for that. His frankness is something startling. He has no idea of reticence on any subject; but probably I learn more about things as they really are from this very defect. In virtue in man or woman, except in that of his former master, he has little, if any belief. He thinks that Japan is right in availing herself of the discoveries made by foreigners, that they have as much to learn from her, and that she will outstrip them in the race, because she takes all that ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... Disposer of our destinies finds it necessary to circumvent our plans and show us how utterly helpless we are. But we will not forestall events. We will calmly await the end, in a direct order comforted by the cheering thought that patience is a virtue and ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... picturesqueness to which they had no real claims. They borrowed their beauty from the wealth of the valley, she told herself. Like the people who lived in them, they had no claims to anything bordering on the refinements or virtues of life. No, they were mockeries, just as was the pretense of virtue which inspired the building of the new church by a gathering of men and women, who, if they had their deserts, would be attending divine service within the four walls ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... was not to be surprised if he went out every morning at or before daybreak. He also mentioned casually that he was to dine at the manse that day, and Sarah, who had been alarmed lest this unexpected virtue might mean illness, was at rest. His habit was to linger over breakfast, propping a book against the sugar basin, and taking it and his rasher slice about, which was, he insisted, the peculiar joy of a bachelor's breakfast; but this morning ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... wishes, not reproaches; with no fear Of the world's gossiping clamour, and no need Of veiling their desires. Conventionalism, Who shrieks by day at what she does by night, Would call this vice; but one time's vice may be The virtue of another; and Vice and Virtue Are but two masks of self; and what hereafter Shall mark out Vice from Virtue in the ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... facilitated our operations; and enabled us, although at the cost of much blood, to free a large portion of India from a race that was a scourge—faithless, intriguing and crafty; cruel, and reckless of life. The Mahrattas, conquering race as they were, yet failed in the one virtue of courage. They could sweep the land with hordes of wild horsemen, could harry peaceful districts and tyrannize over the towns they conquered; but they were unable to make an effective stand against British bayonets and British sabres. They were a race of freebooters; and even the most ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... brought them back only the disgrace of having tried to plunder. There were those at hand ready to take advantage of the public irritation; they accused him, and obtained his condemnation. We are not claiming for Miltiades the praise of virtue; nor should we make any pathetic appeal in his behalf. He was not free from a moral delinquency; but, so far as the Athenians were concerned, his substantial offence was failure in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... "I cannot make this sacrifice; I cannot make an offering of my love to my virtue; for this bugbear of a compulsory marriage I cannot give up a love which God Himself has inspired in my heart. Then let it be so! Let the world judge and the priests condemn me. I will not sacrifice my love to a prejudice. I know that ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... Last and Heavenly Speeches of John, Viscount Kenmure' also still echo through the deserted rooms of Rusco, and after he had gone up from it we find still another Gordon there with his wife and children and farm-tenants, all warm Covenanters, and all continuing the Rusco tradition of godliness and virtue. At the same time Samuel Rutherford was not the man to take it for granted that John Gordon and his household were all saved and home in heaven because they lived within such sacred walls and were all church members and warm Covenanters. He was only ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... affairs" lasted some two or three days, and only when the Captain had not a farthing left of the three roubles or five roubles given him by his grateful customer did he say: "You came! Do you see? Now that we have drunk everything with you, you fool, try again to regain the path of virtue and soberness. It has been truly said that if you do not sin, you will not repent, and, if you do not repent, you shall not be saved. We have done the first, and to repent is useless. Let us make direct for salvation. Go to the river and work, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... dollars!" said "Boss" Kelley, who by virtue of his position took it upon himself to act as judge when matters came before them that were somewhat hard to be decided. Tom had noticed one thing: that his word was law to the two cowboys, and that when ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon

... besought them to stand by him when the King begins "to grudge and loathe his chastising him for his faults, and to impress their young King with their assent that he be chastised for his defaults or trespasses, and that for awe thereof he forbear to do amiss, and entered the more busily to virtue ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... who paint with enchanting colours all the graces and all the virtues in happy union, teach us to expect that this union should be indissoluble. Afterwards, from the natural influence of association, we expect in real life to meet with virtue when we see grace, and we are disappointed, almost disgusted, when we find virtue unadorned. This false association has a double effect upon the conduct of women; it prepares them to be pleased, and it excites them to endeavour to please by adventitious charms, rather than by those qualities ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... owing to this effeminate propensity, that all manly exercises, all useful knowledge, and that noble emulation which inspires virtue, and keeps alive respect for the public good, are here unknown. Those amusements which serve in other countries to relax the labours of the industrious, and to keep alive the vigour of the body and mind, are unknown in Peru; and whoever ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... America, that very few general officers have reasoned in this manner; if they had, General Howe would have made an easy conquest of the United States. And it is very obvious, that officers of high rank, with such sentiments, can have no just pretensions to patriotism or public virtue, and can by no means be worthy of any post of honour or place of trust, where the liberties and interest of the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... taken into was honored for its uncommon virtue and wisdom. His two brothers, Tontileaugo and Tecaughretanego were men of great sense, with good heads and good hearts. They treated Smith with the greatest love and patience, and took him to task with affectionate mildness when he transgressed the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... make him rude, And his behavior does confess True courage dwells with gentleness. With sternest wolves he dares engage, And acts on them successful rage. Yet too much courtesy may chance To put him out of countenance. When in his opposer's blood Fortune hath made his virtue good, This creature from an act so brave Grows not more sullen, but more brave. Man's guard he would be, not his sport, Believing he hath ventured for't; But yet no blood, or shed or spent, Can ever make him insolent. Few men ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... de Berri, the unblushing profligate, the undoubted murderess, was, as the daughter of the king's brother, the only legitimate princess left to preside over the royal court. She was fascinating in person and manners, with scarcely a redeeming virtue to atone for her ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... mediator, between the material and the spiritual, she looks inwards as well as outwards, and by experience learns the nature and method of God; and according to the degree of her elevation, purity, and desire, sees, reflects, and transmits God. It is in virtue of the soul's position between the worlds of substance and of phenomenon, and her consequent ability to refer things to their essential ideas, that in her, and her alone, resides an instrument of knowledge competent ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... wasted one moment on mere surprise. She had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be done—and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion, bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue. He devoted himself to his children—of whom he had four—with exemplary care and solicitude. The Antinoeus of former days is now, as has been said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but voice seems hardly necessary to him, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... fair-spoken. Although I have never again met anyone whom I could positively accuse of such practices, that the evil exists in our midst, and is widely spread, I am convinced. For a religion that provides a rich livelihood, while at the same time exalting the attendant crime into positive virtue is at least convenient enough to have many ardent devotees." The words were accompanied by a glance around the listening group, and a disdainful half-smile that expressed ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... bard the frigid caution crept, Till Declamation roared whilst Passion slept; Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remained though Nature fled,. . . Exulting Folly hailed the joyful day, And Pantomime and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... her; but what was then a spark is now a flame. Don't think it is her loveliness alone that bewitched me. She might indeed enchant the most insensible of mankind; but I found a far more glorious treasure in the angelic heart of your daughter. Her virtue, the immaculate purity of her soul, her gentle and magnanimous sentiments,—in a word, the prodigal gifts of mind and body which God has lavished on her,—have increased my admiration to love, my love to absolute idolatry! How dare I conceal my emotion from ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... better conduct; and that so confidently, that we judge it needless to deserve them. I think it improbable that I shall ever write like Shakespeare, conduct an army like Hannibal, or distinguish myself like Marcus Aurelius in the paths of virtue; and yet I have my by-days, hope prompting, when I am very ready to believe that I shall combine all these various excellences in my own person, and go marching down to posterity with divine honours. There is nothing so monstrous but we can believe ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... idea worthy of a feverish poet," said she, laughing rather compassionately, and taking out the flower. "I scorn to owe anything to magic. Here, Mr. Hollingsworth, you may keep the spell while it has any virtue in it; but I cannot promise you not to appear with a new one to-morrow. It is the one relic of my ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... were often exquisitely original. He used to quote the criticism of a celebrated country rat-catcher, on the study he had made from him, with hearty triumph and delight. When asked whether he thought his portrait like, the rat-catcher, who—perhaps in virtue of his calling—was a gruff and unhesitating man, immediately declared that the face was "not a morsel like," but vowed with a great oath, that nothing could ever be equal to the correctness of the dirt shine ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... a few robins; well, what of that? What's virtue in man can't be vice in a cat. There's a thing or two I should like to know,— Who killed the chicken a week ago, For nothing at all that I could spy, But to make an overgrown chicken-pie? 'Twixt you and me, 'Tis plain to see, The odds is, you like fricassee, While my brave maw Owns no such law, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... subtility and devilish invention, and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts, ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them a spirit of emulation, and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... considering you as a friend. You must believe that we are really interested in you," he continued, laying a kindly hand on the young fellow's shoulder. "You seem in a bad way, it's true, but your condition is far from desperate. Patsy's frankness—it's her one fault and her chief virtue—led you to talk about yourself, and I'm surprised to find you so despondent and—and—what do you ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... head, may be all traced up to that one act of disobedience, I have been a mother myself—may say I am a mother now, for my grand-daughter is as dear to me as was her blessed mother—and it is when we look down, rather than when we look up, as it might be, that we get to understand the true virtue of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... the whole South will depend upon their condition for its prosperity. True progress depends upon the sacredness and sanctity of the home. That a people or a nation may be happy or prosperous it must have enlightened and intelligent homes, and for this purpose the girls must be educated in virtue, industry and self-reliance. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various

... have profoundly affected habits of thought and feeling by uniting together the merely natural emotion of sexual reserve with, on the one hand, the masculine virtue of modesty—modestia—and, on the other, the prescription of sexual abstinence. Tertullian admirably illustrates this confusion, and his treatises De Pudicitia and De Cultu Feminarum are instructive ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... animals is another virtue of the Norwegian people. Illustrating this trait we again ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... of her game of 'patience,' and secretly indulging in a sip. My aunt is but one year my senior, and I am barely thirty. My aunt is a classical beauty, highly intellectual, and very talented; quite a female phenomenon. That tall, slender girl is Countess Flamma, a miracle of beauty and virtue; and that tiny creature was the little Kobold, Puck, or whatever else you may call her, Cousin Cenni. She is the most skilful photographer of the three, and it was she who told you not to move, and took you with spade in hand. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... is a virtue, Sole bulwark of all right. Away, I say! Let's leave this place, the air grows thick and choking, And the walls have a scent of night-shade—hence! Let us not leave them time for further council. 460 Our quick ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... Redeemer, certain parents brought their young children to Him, as the Evangelist informs us, "that He should touch them;" either believing that there was a healthful virtue, connected with the touch of Him who healed the sick and gave life to the dead, that would be of benefit to them; or, it may be, with more elevated conceptions of Christ's person, and more spiritual desires respecting the welfare ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... stage of human developement which he supposed to precede that of society that he came most roughly into conflict with the accepted beliefs. Men, in his theory, were by nature equal, and their only natural relation was a state of war. It was no innate virtue of man himself which created human society out of this chaos of warring strengths. Hobbes in fact denied the existence of the more spiritual sides of man's nature. His hard and narrow logic dissected every human custom ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... I sometimes accept a popular call, and preach on Temperance or the Abolition of Slavery, I am sure to feel, before I have done with it, what an intrusion it is into another sphere, and so much loss of virtue in my own' (To Carlyle, 1844). But he missed no occasion of showing that in conviction and aim he was with good men. The infirmities of fanatics never hid from him either the transcendent purity of their motives or the grandeur of their cause. This is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... truer gentility. What was this thing that men could learn in the woods and in the North that gave them such poise, such standards, and brought out such qualities of manhood? Yet she knew that the forests did not treat all men alike. Those of intrinsic virtue were made better, their strength was supplemented by the strength of the wilderness itself, but the weaklings perished quickly. This was not a land for soft men, for the weak and the cowardly and the vicious. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... thine be Virtue's tear! Lo! his dim eyes to Liberty he turns, As scarce supported on her broken spear O'er her expiring son ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Zollern laughing; 'your pardon, dear friend, that I interrupt! Your plan is admirable, but first let us get the lady here, see her, hear her, and then we shall know what to do. Meanwhile I must go homewards. Monsieur de Berga, my old friend, who bores me with his virtue but holds me by his well-tried affection, awaits me for supper, and I have a long road before me ere I ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... of justice or policy, every question of authority and freedom, was attacked and defended; and the subject of the momentous contest was the union or separation of Great Britain and America. The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian. ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... in it, the expiation would be attended with difficulty as it could not be ascertained to which deity sacrifice ought to be made; nor could one victim be lawfully offered to two deities, unless in particular cases. Accordingly another temple to Virtue was erected with all speed. Nevertheless, these temples were not dedicated by Marcellus himself. Then at length he set out, with the troops raised to fill up the numbers, to the army he had left the preceding year at Venusia. Crispinus, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... the minister, "Thou art not only diligent, but pious; not only pious, but watchful as an ibis over water. The gods have poured out on thee every virtue: they have given thee serpent cunning, with the eye of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... it is supposed to have a visage so repulsive that the simplest stranger will shudder at sight of it and turn of his own accord to more attractive Virtue. If that were only true! More often than not it is the former that wears a smile and masquerades in agreeable forms, while the latter repels. This is true of the complex life of the city, where a man has landmarks and guide-posts of conduct to go by, and it is equally ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... gazed into it, and listen to the wild fiendish laugh of mingled amusement and wrath that bursts from them in fitful explosions as the truth flashes into their unwilling minds? No; vice had triumphed over virtue, and we deem it a kindness to your sensitive nature to draw a veil over the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... if virtue be thy special care, why is the fairest flower in the garden of innocence and purity blasted like a noxious weed? Why is the bright gem of excellence trampled in the dust like a worthless pebble?—Why is Melissa hurried to ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... corruption of the cheap trash literature, that is now ordinarily supplied for the amusement and instruction of the American people,—and that threatens to uproot and annihilate all the notions of virtue and morals that remain, in spite of sectarianism,—calls for some antidote, some remedy. In every rail car, omnibus, stage coach, steamboat, or canal packet, publications, containing the most poisonous principles and destructive errors, are presented ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... adjective in the widest possible sense. It embraced all reputable action and covered virtue. If conduct were 'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely, 'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and rendered him untrustworthy ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... investment is another supposed virtue, an inheritance from the time when slow growth, once started in a given direction, kept on, so that great acumen was not needed to buy; but that is all changed to-day. Only those "in the ring" can tell where the "boom" ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... in small common things as in great ones, and among the sublimities of character set forth in Him as our example, let us not forget that the homely virtue of hard work is also included. Jonah slept in a storm the sleep of a skulking sluggard, Jesus slept the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... this public-utility trust, for the company had a monopoly of the street railway service and electric power and gas supply of Salt Lake City; and its franchises left it free to extort whatever it could from the people of the whole country side, by virtue of a partnership with the Church authorities whereby extortion was given the ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... whose names are known, let every detail be laid open to the light, so that the people may have a warning. That such details will make a paper "pay" Mr. Slide knew also; but it is not only in Mr. Slide's path of life that the bias of a man's mind may lead him to find that virtue and profit are compatible. An unprofitable newspaper cannot long continue its existence, and, while existing, cannot be widely beneficial. It is the circulation, the profitable circulation,—of forty, fifty, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... extreme in these days if one would continue in the paths of virtue," said Miss Majendie. "Your views," with a piercing and condemnatory glance, "are evidently not extreme. One word for all, Mr. Curzon, and this argument is at an end. I shall not permit my niece, with my permission, ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... say: 'Now, pretty Mammy, you look like you did when Pappy come cou'tin'.' Marse Ned would lay down his paper an' look fus' at Mis' 'Riah den at Mis' Laughter, an' for a minute Mis' 'Riah would smile, den she would look firm an' say to Mis' Laughter, 'Don't you know dat rightousness an' virtue am more 'ceptable to de Lawd den beauty? You's worldly, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... he said. "We are doing the only thing possible—we're trying to get hold of the youngsters and give them a higher sense of civic virtue." ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... render the tougher hard soils more friable, their chief virtue being lightening it. In a very mild degree they are a fertilizer, though in no degree comparable in this respect to hardwood ashes. Yet it has been proved that soil to which sifted coal ashes had been added grew plants of richer, darker foliage. ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... the swaying man by the door, peering through the half-darkness: "Is it not Detective-Sergeant Peterson and Constable Fairbank? Welcome to this home of virtue." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... was of a kindly disposition; truthful, he thought; with no very distinct religion, but she had a general desire to be good; simple and frugal in her ways of living,—though this was a necessity, and she had no idea of frugality being in itself a virtue. On the other hand, her views as to what was most to be desired in life were simply the result of the atmosphere in which she had lived; and she confessed to him that the most beautiful thing she had ever seen was the arrivals at a Mansion House ball—the coloured stair-cloth, the beautiful ladies, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... know you were that kind, Haines," said Norton, his virtue aroused at the thought of losing his money. "So you're playing the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... define the rights of the individual in terms of the common good, and think of the common good in terms of the welfare of all the individuals who constitute a society. Thus in economics we avoid the confusion of liberty with competition, and see no virtue in the right of a man to get the better of others. At the same time we are not led to minimize the share of personal initiative, talent, or energy in production, but are free to contend for their claim to adequate recognition. A Socialist who ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... the Indian bosom is invincible. It is beyond the reach of sympathy, as it is beyond the reach of fear. It stands alone in its devotion to warlike brutality. Hatred is its supreme passion, just as fearlessness is its supreme virtue. And hatred and revenge are moving to-night—moving under the calm covering of apparent peace; moving now lest the morrow should put it beyond the power of the red man to mete out the full measure of his lust for native ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... seeking royal consideration were some squeaking in pig-pens, others braying in the luxuriant meadows for which they petitioned, issued the huge grant; and to-day there is serious reason to suppose that many of the wealthiest and oldest families around Winchester are enjoying their lands by virtue of titles given ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... white seven-pointed star symbolizing the seven verses of the opening Sura (Al-Fatiha) of the Holy Koran; the seven points on the star represent faith in One God, humanity, national spirit, humility, social justice, virtue, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... 123. Sakala-Maramma-ratthavasino ca: ayam amhakam raja bodhisatto ti voharimsu. In the Po-U-Daung inscription, Alompra's son, Hsin-byu-shin, says twice "In virtue of this my good deed, may I become a Buddha, ... an omniscient one." Indian Antiquary, 1893, pp. 2 and 5. There is something Mahayanist in this aspiration. Cf. too the inscriptions of the Siamese King Sri-Suryavamsa ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... not to procure to tamed wenches (begueules mitigees) the satisfaction of thinking well of the piece in a small trellised box, and then to say all manner of evil against it in public. The pleasure of vice and the honors of virtue, that is what the prudery of our age demands. My piece is not double-faced. It must be accepted or repelled. I salute you, my lord duke, and keep my box." [Footnote: "Correspondance de Diderot et ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... and her appeasing reason for pursuing the conventional system with this exceptional young creature, referred to the sentiments on that subject of the kind of young man whom a mother elects from among those present and eligible, as perhaps next to worthy to wed the girl, by virtue of good promise in the moral department. She had Mr. Dudley Sowerby under view; far from the man of her choice and still the practice of decorum, discretion, a pardonable fastidiousness, appears, if women may make any forecast ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Prime Minister has been in favour again. What was a virtue in May ought of this conference once, and he may be so not to be a crime ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various

... Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and ...
— The Emancipation Proclamation • Abraham Lincoln

... Mrs. Ballinger looked like an effigy of virtue in silver. "And at your age you should be ashamed to utter such a sentiment even if ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... shapes itself, in a somewhat crude and rough way to be sure, yet by virtue of substantial lines of division, into a few sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to the Revolutionary period, what may be called the destructive period, since it witnessed the destruction of the long-established political conditions. In this group we find the leaders of the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... lady Virtue, who flouted me, could be lured to love this beggar-man?" He ambled across to where Villon lay and tapped him on the shoulder. Villon turned to him a face drawn ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... something that is kindred to cattle in the best sense—something in their art and literature that is essentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced—a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft, and meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best years of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no vice: I laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue; kept no vicious company; was never in the whole of my life intoxicated; was no gamester, no consumer of time in idleness nor brutal pleasures; but devoted many hundred laborious nights to studies that might make me useful to my country; yet was I punished with a severity too cruel even ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... story Elijah Westlake Bemis is not shown often in a heroic light. Yet he had in his being the making of a hero, for he was brave. And heroism, after all, is only effective reliance on some virtue in a crisis, in spite of temptations to do the easy excusable thing. And when Lige Bemis sneaks through this story in unlovely guise, remember that he has a virtue that once ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... perhaps, than many a clergyman who preached last Sunday,' for the patient told the Doctor the play raised such horror and contrition in his soul that he would, if it would please God to raise a friend to extricate him out of that distress, dedicate, the rest of his life to religion and virtue. Though I never knew his name or saw him, to my knowledge, I had, for nine or ten years, at my benefit a note sealed up, with ten guineas, and these words—'A tribute of gratitude from one who was highly obliged, and saved from ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... ground for above two or three years. Faro has proved a more substantial speculation. But I miscarried in applying my remembrance to the assignats, which still maintain their ground against that long-decried but as long-adored corrupter of virtue, gold.(845) Alack! I do not hear that virtue has flourished more for the destruction of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... an obstinate penchant for nature in all her [2] moods and forms, a satisfaction with whatever is hers. And what shall this be named, a weakness, or a— virtue? [5] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... declaimers? Enthusiasm! O God! thou seest my tears. Thou hast allotted us our portion of misery: must we also have brethren to persecute us, to deprive us of our consolation, of our trust in thee, and in thy love and mercy? For our trust in the virtue of the healing root, or in the strength of the vine, what is it else than a belief in thee from whom all that surrounds us derives its healing and restoring powers? Father, whom I know not,—who wert once wont to fill my soul, but who now hidest thy face from me,—call me back to thee; ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... Christian civilization of the nineteenth century is well summed up in London and New York—the two foci of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, which control the shape of the world's commercial ellipse. Look at the riches and the misery; at the "religious enterprise" and the heathen darkness; at the virtue, the decorum, and the beauty of woman well-born and well bred; and at the wild sea of prostitution, which swells and breaks and dashes against the bulwarks of society—every ripple ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... extraordinarily cheerful, because it is a Christian virtue, cheerfulness; not because they are brimming over with joy, or that lovely feeling of being alive and not minding much what happens, you feel so splendid, like I get ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... every action from the solitary principle of self-love, they are inestimable. They form one continued satire on human nature; but they are not reconcilable to the feelings of the man of better sympathies, or to him who passes through life with the firm integrity of virtue. Even at court we find a Sully, a Malesherbes, and a Clarendon, as well as a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... happy place only dispense Such various Pleasures to the Sense, Here Health it self does live, That Salt of Life which does to all a relish give, Its standing Pleasure, and intrinsick Wealth, The Bodies Virtue, and the Souls good Fortune, Health. The Tree of Life, when it in Eden stood, Did its Immortal Head to Heaven rear; It lasted a tall Cedar till the Flood; Now a small thorny Shrub it does appear; Nor will it thrive too every ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... you like them good ladies next door, and that nice gentleman opposite, all to kinder rise up and say, 'Oh, what a dear good little girl Sarah Walker is?'" The interpolation of a smacking sound of lips, as if in unctuous anticipation of Sarah Walker's virtue, here ensued—"Oh, what a dear, good, sw-e-et, lovely little ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... changed; (4) Greater reason is given to a king than to any one else—the king is an earthly image of God's majesty, and it is wrong, therefore, to look upon him as a mere man. The king is a public person and in him the whole nation is embodied. "As in God are united all perfection and every virtue, so all the power of all the individuals in a community is united in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months—for years—his life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration—like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... "Atheism is not the denial of a first omnipotent cause. Real atheism is not that at all. Real atheism is purely and solely nothing else but the disowning, and the forsaking, and the renouncing of the goodness, and the virtue, and the benevolence and the meekness, of the divine nature: that divine nature which has made itself so experimental and so self-evident in us all. And as this experimental and self-evident knowledge is the only sure knowledge ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been the life of the European peasant from the dawn of history to the beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of the people of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it had seemed that, by virtue of machines, and scientific civilisation, Europe was to be lifted out of this perpetual round of animal drudgery, and that America was to evade it very largely from the outset. And with the smash of the high and dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical civilisation that had arisen so ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... coal bunkers, and at Mr. Gibney's suggestion some twenty tons of sacked coal were piled on top of the fo'castle head and on the main deck for'd, in case of emergency. They lay in the harbour all day until about four o'clock, when Mr. Gibney, by virtue of his authority as supercargo, ordered the lines cast off and the Maggie steamed out of the harbour. Off Point Loma they veered to the south, leaving the Coronado Islands on the starboard quarter, ten miles to the west. Mr. Gibney was below with Captain Scraggs, battling with the problem ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... Augustus, a woman distinguished for her beauty and her virtue; was married first to Marcellus, and on his death to Mark Antony, who forsook her for Cleopatra, but to whom she remained true, even, on his miserable end, nursing his children by Cleopatra along with her own; one other grief she had to endure in the death of her son ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... man who was to lead the church as its teacher or pastor, though this practice was abandoned as the state-church idea developed, as it did in New England by a process of reaction. Every man could read the Bible for himself, and give it such meaning as his own conscience and reason dictated. By virtue of his Christian experience he had the personal right to find in it his own creed and the law of his own conduct. It was not only his right to do this, but it was also his duty. Revivalism was therefore the distinct ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... left to soak in cold water until to-morrow's dinner. Of course I admire the industry that gets work well over before its results are called for. Nothing is more annoying than work left untouched until the last moment, and then hurriedly done. Still, virtue may be carried to excess, and a man may be ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... this:—to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... that, though cleanliness was next to Godliness, cleanliness, like Godliness, was often a difficult virtue to acquire. We found it almost impossible to be cleanly without the aid of fresh water, so the schemes devised to avoid the executive's order and get it were many ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday



Words linked to "Virtue" :   morality, pureness, natural virtue, goodness, good, purity, chaste, demerit, theological virtue, worth, honour, virtuous, unchaste, honor



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