Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

The word of God is full of sad and grave counsel, full of the knowledge of God, of examples of virtues, and of correction of vices, of the end of this life, and of the life to come.

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

Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

Be patient. Patience is the mother of all virtues.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

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.

If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.

Leadership experts and the public alike extol the virtues of transformational leaders - those who set out bold objectives and take risks to change the world. We tend to downplay 'transactional' leaders, whose goals are more modest, as mere managers.

The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.

The home is the chief school of human virtues.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side... It has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Above all, remember that God looks for solid virtues in us, such as patience, humility, obedience, abnegation of your own will - that is, the good will to serve Him and our neighbor in Him. His providence allows us other devotions only insofar as He sees that they are useful to us.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

The orchid's association in Chinese culture with such virtues as elegance, good taste, friendship, and fertility goes all the way back to Confucius himself, who was said to have a particular attachment to the flowers.

Emotionally damaged men all too often rip apart their own lives, and those of their partners and children. I see both physical fitness and emotional strength as virtues, but they are acquired by entirely different means.