Edmund Waller Quotes

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above is character.

Virtue is an inner strength. It expands your nature.

None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.

As the excellence of steel is strength, and the excellence of art is beauty, so the excellence of mankind is moral character.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

Virtue is the fount whence honour springs.

Character - not wealth, power, or position - is the supreme word.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes.

It is by character and not by intellect the world is won.

When virtue has slept it will arise more vigorous.

Courage combined with integrity is the foundation of character.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Character is that quality of mind which makes truth-telling instinctive rather than strange.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

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.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Virtue alone has majesty in death.

Virtue is the truest nobility.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

The just man walks in his integrity

Courage is the most important of the virtues because it is the one that makes all the others possible.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.