Joseph Hall Quotes

Virtue is not hereditary.

For there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens.

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

If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in one kind of being, we might believe that the whole treasure of morality and order is enshrined in the female character.

Generosity, pleasing address, courage and propriety of conduct are not acquired, but are inbred qualities.

An honest man is strange when he is among dishonest men, but it is a good kind of strangeness.

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

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! Virtue is at hand.

...One who possesses four qualities is deposited in heaven as if brought there. What four? Bodily good conduct, verbal good conduct, mental good conduct, and gratitude or thankfulness. One possessing these four qualities is deposited in heaven as if brought there.

Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, Manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man

All true religion must stand on true morality.

Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

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

All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.

In the Way of Heaven, there is no partiality of love; it is always on the side of the good man.

Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.

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

Humility is the mother of all virtues, courage the father, integrity the child and wisdom the grandchild.

The Master said, "Wealth and honor are things that all people desire, and yet unless they are acquired in the proper way I will not abide them. Poverty and disgrace are things that all people hate, and yet unless they are avoided in the proper way I will not despise them. If the gentleman abandons ren, how can he be worthy of that name? The gentleman does not violate ren even for the amount of time required to eat a meal. Even in times of urgency or distress, he does not depart from it."