Virtues

Famous quotes containing the word virtues:

    It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.
    Bernard De Mandeville (1670–1733)

    Small faults and virtues are for daily life. The big ones are for emergencies.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind—the mind of a fighter—in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man’s first beginning.
    Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)