To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.
Buddha

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
Thomas Jefferson

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
Thomas Jefferson

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Maya Angelou

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
Albert Einstein

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
C. S. Lewis

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.
Ayn Rand

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.
Confucius

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

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
Confucius

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

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
Confucius

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
George Washington