Tacitus Quotes

Prosperity is the measure or touchstone of virtue, for it is less difficult to bear misfortune than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends - there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless - be unhappy - and die a bankrupt in soul.

Plato said that virtue has no master. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

Whatever any one does or says, I must be good; just as if the emerald were always saying this: "Whatever any one does or says, I must still be emerald, and keep my color.

Often devotion to virtue arises from sated desire.

True freedom is where an individual's thoughts and actions are in alignment with that which is true, correct, and of honor - no matter the personal price.

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.

The test of character is having the ability to meet challenges.

If Mother Theresa went to Atlantic City, I don't think she'd start playing Blackjack.

I did not use paint, I made myself up morally.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

A man's character is his guardian divinity.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Moral character has now some influence in our elections, but not that place which it deserves. The law of public opinion excludes confirmed sots, and persons judicially convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors against the State; but it ought to render the election of all profane swearers, notorious Sabbath breakers, seducers, slanderers, prodigals and riotous persons, as well as the advocates of dueling, impracticable.

The more men value money the less they value virtue.

Power won't change me.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

Prosperity is a more refined and severer test of character than adversity as one hour of summer sunshine produces greater corruption than the longest winter day.

I try to be the same guy every day, no matter the situation, no matter the adversity.