Quote by Samuel Johnson

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous


No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous

Summary

This quote suggests that greatness or success is deeply intertwined with virtue. It implies that individuals or groups cannot achieve true greatness if they have abandoned or lost their moral character and principles. According to this concept, virtue is considered an essential foundation for achieving greatness in any aspect of life, such as personal achievements, societal progress, or leadership. The quote implies that greatness is not solely measured by external accomplishments but also by individuals' adherence to ethical values.

Topics

Virtue
By Samuel Johnson
Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.

Henry David Thoreau