Patience is a poynt, thagh it displese ofte. Patience is a virtue, though it often displeases.

-Anonymous
c.1370  Patience, l.1.

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying ina mean†it is a mean between twovices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.2, ch.6,1006 (translated by Sir David Ross).

Silentium, stultorum virtus. Silence is the virtue of fools.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  De Dignitiate et  Augmentis Scientiarum,  Antitheta no.31 (translated by Gilbert  Watts,1640).

The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.5,'Of  Adversity'.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.5,'Of  Adversity'.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.43,'Of Beauty'.

Il est l'heure de s'enivrer! Pour n'e"  tre pas les esclaves martyrise¤  s duTemps, enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poe¤  sie ou de vertu, a'   votre guise. This is the time for drunkenness! Be not the martyred slaves of Time, drink without stopping! Drink wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  Le Spleen de Paris,'Enivrez-vous'.

Even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end, and had no sign of virtue to shew; but were consumed in our own wickedness. For the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind; like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm; like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Wisdom of Solomon 5:13^14.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said,Who touched my clothes?

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Mark 5:30.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, thinkon these things.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Philippians 4:8.

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

What is it that constitutes virtue, Mrs Graham? Is it the circumstance of being able and willing to resist temptation; or that of having no temptation to resist?

-Bronte«  , Anne
  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, ch.3.

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

-Browne, SirThomas
^5  Religio Medici (published1643), pt.1, section 55.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

-Burke, Edmund
  On Conciliation with  America.

Virtue issimply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function.You are happy when you are functioning.

-Burroughs,William S(eward)
  Painting and Guns,'The Creative Observer'.

Virtue's no more in womankind But the green sickness of the mind. Philosophy, their new delight, A kind of charcoal appetite.

-Cleveland,John
  'The  Antiplatonic'.

Repentance is the virtue of weak minds.

-Dryden,John
  The Indian Emperor, act 3, sc.1.

Virtue's his path; but sometimes 'tis too narrow For his vast soul; and then he starts out wide, And bounds into a vice.

-Dryden,John
  Of  Antony.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act1.

The only reward of virtueisvirtue; theonly way tohavea friend is to be one.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
Essays: First Series,'Friendship'.

   Alas, it doesindeed seema monstrousthing, but afterall, what is chaste in Constantinople may have the aspect of lewdness in Liverpool, and what in Liverpool may pass for virtueinConstantinopleisfrequently regardedasvice.

-Ford, Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer
  Letter to  John Lane,17 Dec.