Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention.

Conscience is the sentinel of virtue.

This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.

Many people think that virtue consists of severity towards others.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

Let them call it mischief: When it is past and prospered t'will be virtue.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.