Word Finder - virtuous

definition

Full of virtue, having excellent moral character.

example

Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.

She was the most honest and virtuous woman that he had ever met.

The virtuous man is pure, not in act only, but also in heart.

For if the pleasure of virtuous activity is a supervening end beyond the activity, it becomes a supervening end beyond the happiness of virtuous activity, which thus ceases to be the final end.

The souls of the virtuous pass after death into ever new incarnations of greater perfection, till at last they reach a point at which they can be re-absorbed into the Deity itself; those of the wicked may be degraded to the level of camels or dogs.

The higher happiness is given to man by free grace of God; but it is given to those only whose heart is right, and as a reward of virtuous actions.

Why is it virtuous for a woman to practice chastity, and ludicrous for a man?

It was said that he was so virtuous as hardly to have committed a venial sin.

With the virtuous life was further to be conjoined a humble disposition to adore the Creator, avoiding all factitious forms of worship as worse than useless.

And that the right or wrong of choice depends not on the cause of choice but on its nature, he illustrates by the example of Christ, whose acts were necessarily holy, yet truly virtuous, praiseworthy and rewardable.

Faenza held out, for the people were devoted to their lord, Astorre Manfredi, a handsome and virtuous youth of eighteen.

Why not make them first happy, and then virtuous?"

An action is simply virtuous or not; it cannot be more or less virtuous.

Only in a secondary sense is approval due to certain " abilities and dispositions immediately connected with virtuous affections," as candour, veracity, fortitude, sense of honour; while in a lower grade still are placed sciences and arts, along with even bodily skills and gifts; indeed, the approbation we give to these is not strictly moral, but is referred to the " sense of decency or dignity," which (as well as the sense of honour) is to be distinguished from 1 In a remarkable passage near the close of his eleventh sermon Butler seems even to allow that conscience would have to give way to self-love, if it were possible (which it is not) that the two should come into ultimate and irreconcilable conflict.

If we ask what actual motive we have for virtuous conduct, Hume's answer is not quite clear.

Thus, both reason and sense of instinct co-operate in the impulse to virtuous conduct, though the rational element is primary and paramount.

Finally, Price, writing after the demonstration by Shaftesbury and Butler of the actuality of disinterested impulses in human nature, is bolder and clearer than Cudworth or Clarke in insisting that right actions are to be chosen because they are right by virtuous agents as such, even going so far as to lay down that an act loses its moral worth in proportion as it is done from natural inclination.

In the Mennonite church they represent the rigid, conservative party, as opposed to the Galenists, who inclined towards the Arminian latitudinarianism and admitted into their community all those who led a virtuous life, whatever their doctrinal tendencies.

A virtuous circle that frees you to do the crucial bit - convert the traffic into sales.

For Jefferson, a virtuous and active citizenry was vital to the health of a republican nation.

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth.

This means no more than that most people like to appear virtuous.

Special mention may be made here of the tale of Abikar - the wise and virtuous secretary of Sennacherib, king of Assyria - and of his wicked nephew Nadhan.

All mankind fall into two classes - the wise or virtuous, the unwise or wicked - the distinction being absolute.

He endeavours to establish this inductively by a survey of the qualities, commonly praised as virtues, which he finds to be always either useful or immediately agreeable, either (1) to the virtuous agent himself or (2) to others.

Both thinkers hold that this perception of right and wrong in actions is accompanied by a perception of merit and demerit in agents, and also by a specific emotion; but whereas Price conceives this emotion chiefly as pleasure or pain, analogous to that produced in the mind by physical beauty or deformity, Reid regards it chiefly as benevolent affection, esteem and sympathy (or their opposites), for the virtuous (or vicious) agent.

Indeed, the acquired tendency to virtuous conduct may become so strong that the habit of willing it may continue, " even when the reward which 3 I should be observed that Austin, after Bentham, more frequently uses the term " moral " to connote what he more distinctly calls " positive morality," the code of rules supported by common opinion in any society.

Like Price he holds that an action is not good unless done from a good motive, and that this motive must be essentially different from natural inclination of any kind; duty, to be duty, must be done for duty's sake; and he argues, with more subtlety than Price or Reid, that though a virtuous act is no doubt pleasant to the virtuous agent, and any violation of duty painful, this moral pleasure (or pain) cannot strictly be the motive to the act, because it follows instead of preceding the recognition of our obligation to do it.'

It may be taken to imply that the useless and the criminal should be entitled to as much happiness as the useful and the virtuous.

Although already married to the virtuous and charming Archduchess Giovanna of Austria, he seduced the fair Venetian and loaded her with jewels, money and other presents.

If he was having problems finding a virtuous mate, fault more likely lay in a character flaw than his looks - as Katie had so often implied.

Most Anabaptists, however, practiced a virtuous monogamy and avoided all immorality.

Specifically, S is subjectively justified in believing pecifically, S is subjectively justified in believing p insofar as S is epistemically virtuous in believing p.

Proponents of machinofacture reckoned that the factory system was evidently a consequence of intelligent reason and thus providential and virtuous.

It describes a virtuous maiden who is put under a spell by an evil sorceress.

Such places benefit from a virtuous circle, or upward spiral, whereby talent attracts talent.

Where X-Men are cynical superheroes, here we have a virtuous superhero in a cynical world.

They do not even give hope that we can become morally virtuous.

Yet the truly virtuous person performs a morally right action for its own sake.

Patience is a virtue... I don't seem to be very virtuous at times.

Lucinda and her friends are not virtuous because of their piety.

G 137 The identification of virtue and rationality can really only work for those who are naturally virtuous.

I love creating space - throwing rubbish away makes me feel very virtuous!

Their advice can be genuinely valuable (and is often surprisingly positive,) and having them involved is considered virtuous by the QAA.

Thyself art cleansed and made virtuous by no work so much.

He points out that under this benevolent despotism, though men might be happy, their happiness was unstable, because it depended on the character of a single man; and the highest praise he can give to those virtuous princes is that they " deserved the honour of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of a rational freedom."

Some unknown Peripatetic detected a flaw in the Nicomachean Ethics when he said that pleasure is a supervening end beyond activity, and, if he had gone on to add that happiness is also a supervening end beyond the virtuous activities which are necessary to produce it, he would have destroyed the foundation of his own founder's Ethics.

Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous.

Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an acquaintance--he wished him simply a brother and a virtuous instructor.

To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man.

In the case of a crime we most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly.