La Rochefoucauld §laroch_001: What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interes...

What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste. "Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave; Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise, His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies." Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. i. line 115.