Dinah Maria Mulock Quotes

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

Even in decline, a virtuous man increases the beauty of his behavior. A burning stick, though turned to the ground, has its flame drawn upwards.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

Virtue is a positive quality developed by taking a firm stand for the right in temptation, or by the suffering endured in consequence of wrongdoing.

I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.

I'd always found goodness more interesting then evil, though I was aware this wasn't the most general view. To my mind, it took more work and more courage to be good, an opinion continually reinforced by my own shortcomings.

I like people to be saints; but I want them to be first and superlatively honest men.

A good man's life is all of a piece.

True valor is like honesty; it enters into all that a man sees and does.

Virtue alone is the unerring sign of a noble soul.

But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant.

Integrity means always doing what is right and good, regardless of the immediate consequences.

Like all virtuous people he imagines he must speak the truth.

A good man will not lie, although it be for his profit.

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.

Cowards can never be moral.

Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated.

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

Be thou good thyself, and let people speak evil of thee; it is better than to be wicked, and that they should consider thee as good.

It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.

Virtuous men alone possess friends.