Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.35

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls, to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, The breath goes now, and some say, no: 280 So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity of our love.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'A  Valediction: Forbidding Mourning', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

Avirtuous man can almost cease to believe in Hell, but he carried Hell about with him. Sometimes at night he dreamed of it† Evil ran like malaria in his veins.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  The Power and the Glory, pt.3, ch.1.

If love be a god, why should not lovers be virtuous?

-Lyly,John
  Gallathea, act 3, sc.1.

Il n'y a que deux sortes d'hommes: les uns justes, qui se croient pe¤  cheurs; les autres pe¤  cheurs, qui se croient justes. There are only two types of people: the virtuous who believe themselves to be sinners and the sinners who believe themselves to be virtuous.

-Pascal, Blaise
c.1654^1662  Pense¤  es, pt.7, no.534.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

-Pope, Alexander
  Miscellanies,'Thoughts onVarious Subjects', vol.2.

Il ne reste donc que l'exemple qui puisse servir de re'  gle a' quantite¤   de personnes dans l'exercice de la vertu. Most people can learn only by example to be virtuous.

-Pre¤  vost, Abbe¤   Antoine-Fran c° ois
Histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et deManon Lescaut, Avis de l'auteur.

Be a good manöbe virtuousöbe religiousöbe a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Last words, addressed to Lockhart, quoted inJohn G Lockhart Memoirs of the Life of SirWalter Scott, Bart. (1837^8). Scott concluded by saying 'God bless you all.'

  As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

-Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills
  'The Soul of Man under Socialism'.