Love Virtues Quotes & Sayings

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues - faith and hope. — Charles Dickens

I'd rather live a life I truly love by spending my time doing things I love and have that be my only life rather than devote myself to someone who can't be proven exists at all that wants our time and our love more than our virtues simply just so I can live again — Anonymous

We can see both that love for God is begotten from the virtues and that virtues are born of love. For this reason the Lord said at one point in the Gospels, 'He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me' (Jn. 14:21), and at another point, 'He who loves Me will keep My commandments' (cf. Jn. 14:23). — Gregory Palamas

True friendship is self-love at second hand; where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness. — William Hazlitt

When we look at the world through the eyes of the Master, the world will look so much more beautiful - not a nasty place, but a place filled with love, joy, compassion and all virtues — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

One does not have to imagine people perfect in order to love them, Mr. Monk. Love acknowledges faults, weaknesses, even the need now and again for forgiveness where there is no repentance and no understanding of fault. We learn at different speeds. Elissa had many strengths, many virtues, and she was unflinchingly brave. I think she was the bravest woman I ever knew. I am truly sorry she is dead, but I cannot believe Kristian killed her, unless he has changed beyond all recognition from the man I knew. — Anne Perry

That was the trouble with pride, and courage, and all those clench-jawed virtues bards love to harp on. The more you have, the more likely you are to end up bottom in a pile of dead men. — Joe Abercrombie

You must love no-thingness,
You must flee something,
You must remain alone,
And go to nobody.
You must be very active
And free of all things.
You must deliver the captives
And force those who are free.
You must comfort the sick
And yet have nothing yourself.
You must drink the water of suffering
And light the fire of Love with the wood of the virtues.
Thus you live in the true desert. — Jessica Shirvington

Stimulate the heart to love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trism lived in Liir's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress habillards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trism's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing. — Gregory Maguire

I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand. — Joan Didion

But what kind of love is this that is so unaware of itself that it can be hidden until the day of judgement? The answer is obvious. Because love is hidden it cannot be a visible virtue or a habit which can be acquired. Take heed, it says, that you do not exchange true love for an amiable virtuousness, a human "quality." Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word. But if we are to have it, our old man must die with all his virtues and qualities, and this can only be done where the disciple forgets self and clings solely to Christ. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Courage is not a virtue of value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism. — Rollo May

Lying is wrong. When you tell a lie for the sake of sparing someone's feelings it is not suddenly right, but it is compassionate. And is not compassion a form of love? Love - the greatest of all virtues! So, my darling, I do wrong for you. I lie that you might feel loved. — Richelle E. Goodrich

He knew Alec enough by now to know the conflicting impulses that warred in him. He was conscientious, the kind of person who believed that the others around him were so much more important than he was, who already believed he was letting everybody down. And he was honest, the kind of person that was naturally open about all he felt and wanted. Alec's virtues had made a trap for him; these two good qualities had collided painfully. He felt he could not be honest without disappointing everyone he loved. It was a hideous conundrum for him. It was as if the world had been designed to make him unhappy. — Cassandra Clare

Attention is the cardinal psychological virtue. On it depends perhaps the other cardinal virtues, for there can hardly be faith nor hope nor love for anything unless it first receives attention. — James Hillman

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection. — Jean Paul

Her virtues, graced with external gifts, Do breed love's settled passions in my heart; And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love. — William Shakespeare

The man smiled. "Harry is unique, for he was born with a special gift of sight, with eyes able to see things that are unseen. He has talents to move matter by the sound of his voice. — Mark Andrew Poe

The Art of Peace is based on four Great Virtues: Bravery, Wisdom, Love, and Friendship, symbolized by Fire, Heaven, Earth, and Water. — Morihei Ueshiba

I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him. Do you understand? — Leo Tolstoy

Love blinds us to faults, hatred to virtues. — Moses Ibn Ezra

Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else. — Honore De Balzac

Seek for illumination of self, and then the world, through the simple, humble, almighty, supreme virtue of love. — Bryant McGill

The virtues of free enterprise can become distorted by greed & delusion. — Allan Lokos

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness. — Steven Pressfield

Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence
and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without. — Nikolai Gogol

Yes, it was a "beautiful" sermon, tugging the emotions and conjuring up pictures of greatness and peace. But were they talking about the decent peppery ordinary old man he knew, or had the subject strayed to the story of some saint of the past? Or were there perhaps two men being buried under the same name? One perhaps had shown himself to Ross, while the other had been reserved for the view of men like William-Alfred. Ross tried to remember Charles before he was ill, Charles with his love of cockfighting and his hearty appetite, with his perpetual flatulence and passion for gin, with his occasional generosities and meannesses and faults and virtues, like most men. There was some mistake somewhere. Oh well, this was a special occasion...But Charles himself would surely have been amused. Or would he have shed a tear with the rest for the manner of man who had passed away? — Winston Graham

When the citizens of a nation have been made to love and adhere to values and virtues, then they make better choices. — Sunday Adelaja

All good virtues and goodness itself will gradually find their true home in the heart in which love dwells, and all other qualities will wither and die — Harold Klemp

I would like to raise them as I was. I would like for them to learn naturally, effortlessly, almost without knowing it, that the love of beautiful things, critical thinking, and intellectual honesty are the three essential virtues. This way, they will like things for themselves, will judge for themselves. This way, they will be real men, as there used to be, they won't be fooled by intellectual snobs and political scoundrels. They will know how to live above and outside of a century which is only getting deeper into infamy, lies, and stupidity. I love you my dears because I know that it is because of you that I possess some of these virtues that I wish for them to have. — Sean B. Carroll

In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability ...
The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being
in Egypt, India or China
gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both ... It's a curious fact that the
all-male religions have produced no religious imagery
in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle. — Kenneth Clark

But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life. — Agnes Smedley

Compassion and love constitute non-violence in action. They are the source of all spiritual qualities: forgiveness, tolerance, all the virtues. They give meaning to our activities and makes them constructive. There is nothing amazing about being rich or highly educated; only when the individual has a warm heart do these attributes become worthwhile. — Dalai Lama

When death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. — Charles Dickens

If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly. — Meister Eckhart

six fundamental virtues: love, wisdom, truth, goodness, mercy and justice — Gena Showalter

Our virtues are made by love, and our sins caused by the lack of it. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

What time can be more beautiful than the one in which the finest virtues, innocent cheerfulness and indefinable longing for love constitute the sole motives of your life? — Leo Tolstoy

Had he imagined things in Charlotte that had never been there? Had he invented virtues for he, to add luster to her staggering looks? ... Perhaps he had created a Charlotte in her own image who had never existed outside his own besotted mind, but what of it? He had loved the real Charlotte too, the woman who had stripped herself bare in front of him, demanding whether he could still love her if she did this, if she confessed to this, if she treated him like this..until finally she had found his limit and beauty, rage and tears had been insufficient to hold him, and she had fled into the arms of another man. — Robert Galbraith

Last night with Rhys. It was ... the first time in years that I felt so loved. For what I am, for my faults and my virtues, for my past and my future. I haven't had that with a man since ... since I had it with you. And I never expected to have it again. — Elizabeth George

Meditate upon my counsels; love them; follow them; To the divine virtues will they know how to lead thee. I swear it by the One who in our hearts engraved The sacred Tetrad , symbol immense and pure, Source of Nature and model of the Gods. — Pythagoras

Do you want me? I am yours. — Mark Andrew Poe

Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict - courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark. — Steven Pressfield

Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. What's true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I've come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space. There are superstar virtues that come most readily to mind and can be the work of a day or a lifetime - love, compassion, forgiveness. And there are gentle shifts of mind and habit that make those possible, working patiently through the raw materials of our lives. — Krista Tippett

She who has the excellence of home virtues, and can expend within the means of her husband, is a help in the domestic state — Thiruvalluvar

You love another person not because of his virtues- that is infatuation- but in spite of his faults," he said to her. "Love has no place for idealization. — Sudhir Kakar

Those virtues which cost us dear prove that we love God; those which are easy to us prove that He loves us. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both. — Richard Rohr

You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values; their virtues. — Ayn Rand

In much of today's popular culture, the virtues of forgiveness and kindness are belittled, while ridicule, anger, and harsh criticism are encouraged. Let us not hurt the ones we love the most by selfish criticism! — David E. Sorensen

If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life. — Luc De Clapiers

Such was the code that the world had accepted and such was the key to the code: that it hooked man's love of existence to a circuit of torture, so that only the man who had nothing to offer would have nothing to fear, so that the virtues which made life possible and the values which gave it meaning became the agents of its destruction, so that one's best became the tool of one's agony, and man's life on earth became impractical. — Ayn Rand

The child is taught form earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the world wherever she goes, and that they will always look after her. The brothers inhabit the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry. The brothers can be called upon in any critical situation for rescue and assistance. When you die, your four spirit brothers collet your soul and bring you to heaven. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I always wish to find great virtues where there are great talents, and to love what I admire ... — Elizabeth Montagu

For, just as love embodies the life of all virtues and expresses the inmost substance of all holiness, humility is the precondition and basic presupposition for the genuineness, the beauty, and the truth of all virtue. — Dietrich Von Hildebrand

Love is the last and secret name of all the virtues. — Iris Murdoch

The romance genre is the only genre where readers are guaranteed novels that place the heroine at the heart of the story. These are books that celebrate women's heroic virtues and values: courage, honor, determination and a belief in the healing power of love. — Jayne Ann Krentz

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character. — Ayn Rand

By work alone, men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them. Good motives, sincerity, and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes. — Swami Vivekananda

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. — Honore De Balzac

That dress ... was a very, very good decision. I could write an entire poem on the virtues of your legs alone. You are a feast for the senses." I laughed. "I don't know about a feast. Maybe just an hors d'oeuvre." He took my hand and wrapped it around his arm. "Not an hors d'oeuvre. The dessert. And I plan to spoil my appetite. — Colleen Houck

All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life. The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I don't give up on people, even when they give up on me. — Mark Andrew Poe

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused. — Charles Caleb Colton

To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them! — Dorothy Day

It continues to defy explanation why liberals who theoretically love liberty, equality, tolerance and moderation, should find so much to despise in their own country, which represents the fullest expression of those virtues anywhere on the globe. — Mona Charen

Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything - love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.' She — Steven Erikson

It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit. — Joan Didion

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

She taught me,' said Ta-thea, 'that if you do not have couragem all other virtues may be lost, because you cannot keep even love if you are not prepared to fight for it, to endure the hurt it brings, and hold on, no matter the cost. — Anne Perry

The utterance of God is a lamp, whose light is these words: Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one with another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship ... So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth. — Baha'u'llah

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. — John Locke

If use is not an appropriate criterion for decision making in the academic life, what is? Love ... The virtues of love as a criterion for choosing a college major ... it is not pretentious. "Use" is pretentious because it claims to know something about the future that it doesn't really know. Love is immediate ... [love] guarantees that you will work to your highest potential ... it is part of who you are, and not just something you think, often wrongly, that you can use. — Leroy S Rouner

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices. — Charles Caleb Colton

I am British. I love Britain for all its faults and all its virtues. My husband is American and I am largely based in Los Angeles, but whenever someone asks me where home is, I automatically say 'London.' — Helen Mirren

Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect. — Sydney Smith

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Where are all those virtues of unreason that have shaped our idea of love? — Milan Kundera

I believe it's after the honeymoon ends that true love begins. It's in the hard times that the greater virtues of love reveal themselves, like tolerance and patience and kindness. — Richard Paul Evans

Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God's people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger-as long as it is the anger that is part of true love-through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done. — Barbara Brown Taylor

When I hear of people who weary of each other, I believe it is because they have sought virtues in themselves alone, attractions of physical beauty. Have they based their love on each other's thoughts? Who can weary of thoughts which change every day? — Anais Nin

The four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The beggarly question of parentage
what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom. — Thomas Hardy

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity ... and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system. — Samuel Adams

I think the greatest of all human virtues is loyalty. It embraces all the best of the human character: courage, faith, love and charity. — Douglas Bader

From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us; the hearing of the word and prayer. — William Ames

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear. — Joan Didion

As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all. — Charles Caleb Colton

Not basing your principles of sex based on the judgment of other or on hearsay, uphold yourself to virtues that you believe in. Before any laws created by man, religion, and culture; the universe has always held us under the principles of love in all endeavors in life, and this applies to sex as well. Sex is a very personal experience and the morals you follow under this act are a personal notion that you create yourself for the sake of your personal happiness. — Forrest Curran

Qualities like love and compassion are not just abstract virtues that are the property of saints and adepts. Anyone can develop these qualities in themselves by doing spiritual practices. As the Buddha said, Come and see. — Joanna Macy

Thrice damned she howls like Cerberus to the night
Guarding virtues that lie like forgotten stains
On oaken floors that pave the willow lined paths of the past
That lead to a meadow filled with the detritus of wasted love
Rotting under a forgotten sun that no longer shines
In a heart gone cold therein lies the haste of anger. — Neil Leckman

Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature. — John Steinbeck

Ah, but the Moon my Love is jealous, and can you blame him? You outshine him with your virtues ... — John Geddes

For true conversion doth not consist in putting away great and outward sins only, but in descending deeply into your own self, searching into the inmost recesses of the heart, the secrets and closets, all the windings and turnings thereof; changing and renewing them throughout, with the grace that is given you: and so, by faith, you are converted from self-love to Divine love; from the world and all worldly concupiscences, to a spiritual and heavenly life; and from a participation of the pomps and pleasures thereof, to participating the merits and virtues of Christ, by believing his word, and walking in his steps. — Johann Arndt

Some general principles in the holy books of all religions that teach love, charity, liberty, justice and equality for all the human family, there are many grand and beautiful passages, the golden rule has been echoed and re-echoed around the world. There are lofty examples of good and true men and women, all worthy our acceptance and imitation whose lustre cannot be dimmed by the false sentiments and vicious characters bound up in the same volume. The Bible cannot be accepted or rejected as a whole, its teachings are varied and its lessons differ widely from each other. In criticising the peccadilloes of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, we would not shadow the virtues of Deborah, Huldah and Vashti. In criticising the Mosaic code, we would not question — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The virtues of valor and love of liberty; the only virtues which can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity are commonly neglected. — David Hume

The householder must always please his wife with money, clothes, love and faith and never do anything to disturb her. That man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded in his religion and has all the virtues. — Swami Vivekananda