Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/V
VIRTUE.
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.
We cannot have right virtue without right conditions.
True elevation, an elevation essential and eternal, is one of merit, one of virtue. Birth, fortune, genius, are nothing before God. For what is birth before God who was never born? What is fortune before God who made the world? What is genius before God who is an infinite mind?
The paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather.
No state of virtue is complete, however total the virtue, save as it is won by a conflict with evil, and fortified by the struggles of a resolute and even bitter experience.
What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.
A virtuous youth and frugal manhood always create a Pisgah for the veteran in righteousness, from which he may calmly survey the stars, and read his "title clear to mansions in the skies," while yet in the flesh he can soar on the wings of meditation above the clouds, and catch glimpses of the heavenly world that lies in the placid and everlasting orient before him.