Mary Renault Quotes

There is hardly that person to be found who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than honesty and virtue.

A good moral character is the first essential. It is highly important not only to be learned but to be virtuous.

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Possessed of courage but devoid of morality, a superior man will make trouble while a small man will be a brigand.

Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The just man walks in his integrity

Virtue is the first title of nobility.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

Without courage there cannot be truth, and without truth there can be no other virtue.

Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.

All the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it, does not compensate for lack of virtue.

Virtue is not always amiable.

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for a week than to be a hero for fifteen minutes.

If they are just, they are better than clever.

Virtue must shape itself in deed.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at.

Cowards can never be moral.