Character Quote by David McCullough

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.

— Joseph Addison

“Live by old Ethicks and the classical Rules of Honesty. Put no new names or notions upon Authentick Virtues and Vices. Think not that…

— Sir Thomas Browne

“habits of virtue and vice are caused by acts”

— Aristotle

“Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Hypocrisy is said to be the homage that vice pays to virtue,—decorum is the outward expression of that homage; and if this be so,…

— Charles Robert Maturin

There are some persons on whom virtue sits almost as ungraciously as vice.

— Dominique Bouhours

“Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?”

— Gordon R. Dickson

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of…

— Michel de Montaigne

“It is by giving fair names to foul actions that those who would start at real vice are led to practise its lessons, under…

— Walter Scott

“Most people indulged in their vices and clung to their virtues based on their responses to temptation and conflict, not because some Other within…

— Dean Koontz

“It is indeed a mortifying reflection to those who are actuated by the love of fame, so justly denominated the last infirmity of noble…

— David Hume

There is no vice, of which a man can be guilty, no meanness, no shabbiness, no unkindness, which excited so much indignation among his…

— Arthur Schopenhauer