Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use virtuous in a sentence

30 example sentences · adjective

Virtuous means full of virtue; having excellent moral character. Example: “Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.”

Examples of virtuous by meaning

adjectiveFull of virtue; having excellent moral character.

  • Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.
  • Her virtuous, pale-blue, saucerlike eyes flooded with leviathan tears on unexpected occasions and made Yossarian mad.1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 171

More sentences with virtuous

  • Social media is only as virtuous as the people using it.2023 July 10, James Poniewozik, “The Twitter Watch Party Is Over”, in The New York Times. From the entry cattle prod
  • When you're in your virtuous couch you're not slung out of it.2015, A. Bertram Chandler, Alternate Orbits. From the entry virtuous couch
  • I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 35, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, page 239. From the entry unavailableness
  • The teacher’s notes and private lessons, legendarily virtuous, had triumphed once again.1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part Two, Chapter 4. From the entry legendarily
  • She said she had to go home and let Ted know she was seeking her virtuous couch.1956, Erle Stanley Gardner, chapter 14, in The Case of the Lucky Loser. From the entry seek one's virtuous couch
  • Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.1948, Winston Churchill, The Second World War. From the entry trammel
  • The Electress Magdalena Sybilla was a woman of character, virtuous, kind, conventional and managing.1938, CV Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War, page 63. From the entry electress
  • To the ancient Romans, these part-myth, part-legend stories proved that they were the most noble and virtuous people in the world.2016, Pliny O’Brian, Myths of the Ancient Romans (World Mythologies), New York, N.Y.: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC, →ISBN, pages 24–25. From the entry Ancient Roman
  • The upper ranks thought the middling sort were greedy, obsessed with making money, virtuous enough, but lacking taste, elegance and culture.2015, Keith Linley, ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ in Context: The Politics of Passion, Anthem Press, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry middling sort
  • So if the bad boy’s proving elusive, why not try some novel, rewarding activities with a virtuous one?2012 May 14, Susan Carnell, “Bad Boys, Bad Brains”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name). From the entry stick around
  • Poetic justice, however, does not make for virtuous vengeance.2001, Peter A. French, “The Western Vengeance Films”, in The Virtues of Vengeance, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, →ISBN, part…. From the entry poetic justice
  • Even the most virtuous concepts were scrutinised by governments eager to interpret them as codewords for something unwelcome.1993, The Economist. From the entry codeword
  • This virtuous circle, however, must not be mistaken for inevitability.1990, Philip G. Cerny, “The Modern State at the Crossroads: Structuring the Field of Political Action”, in The Changing Architecture of…. From the entry virtuous circle
  • "Don't you know, you giaour dog, the thing e'en more repellent than swineflesh to a virtuous daughter of Islam?1943, Edison Marshall, Great Smith: Issue 689. From the entry swineflesh
  • Car-sharing, wearing patchwork clothes (signifying mending rather than throwing away) and carrying reusable coffee cups all came up as signs of environmentally virtuous behaviour.2026 March 2, “The greenest flags: virtue signals that help you find love – from patchwork clothes to car sharing”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry recycle
  • When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments.2023, Rita Mota and Alan D. Morrison, Moral Disjunction and Role Coadunation in Business and the Professions. From the entry coadunation
  • A tense dynamic in which the virtuous believer is patronizingly positioned as morally correct, thus thrusting the nonvirtuous nonbeliever into shame and (possibly) submission.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 17. From the entry nonvirtuous
  • Then we can feel clean and safe and pure and virtuous and still be properly grateful." Despicable moral cowardice; that's what that is.2013, Tom Kratman, A Desert Called Peace, →ISBN. From the entry salami slicing
  • Louis could aim to restyle himself the first among citizens, viewing virtuous attachment to the public weal as his most important kingly duty.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 372. From the entry weal
  • State structuration, in effect, was characterized by the maintenance of a ‘virtuous circle’ from the post-feudal period to the middle of the twentieth century.1990, Philip G. Cerny, “The Modern State at the Crossroads: Structuring the Field of Political Action”, in The Changing Architecture of…. From the entry virtuous circle
  • I saw Hetty looking at me with the warlight in her eyes and felt virtuous because the dress I had was dark enough, heaven knew!1931, Marion Cran, Gardens in America, page 257. From the entry warlight
  • “I don’t mind how many strange women you’ve loved so long as you don’t tell me about them.” “Women!” said Anthony, with a virtuous air.1925, Agatha Christie, The Secret of Chimneys. From the entry frump
  • The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.1919 August, H. L. Mencken, The Smart Set, pages 60–1. From the entry absolution
  • Fu’s virtuous life has been a sore rebuke to the old lady who spends her days gossiping, feasting and gambling with her old cronies.1915, “Missions”, in Missions: American Baptist International Magazine, volume 6, American Baptist Convention, page 672. From the entry po po
  • We've imbued "natural food" with such virtuous connotations that meat supposedly raised according to the law of nature is, ipso facto, thought to be an ethically worthwhile choice.2011 April 8, James McWilliams, “An Inconvenient Truth: Free-Range Meat Isn't 'Natural'”, in The Atlantic. From the entry ipso facto
  • Substituting something that's trivial-but-noisily-immediate for something that's virtuous — even smally virtuous, like a game we play or ponder — breeds an ugly cynicism about virtue itself.2007 October 28, Richard Ford, “The Noise Is Killing Me”, in New York Times. From the entry smally
  • How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation, Dresden figures of pastoral gaiety!1945, Evelyn Waugh, chapter 3, in Brideshead Revisited […], London: Chapman & Hall, published 1952, →OCLC, book 1 (Et in Arcadia Ego)…. From the entry unreflecting
  • It was not only the brilliant phalanx of virtuous dowagers, generals and academicians with whom he was most intimately associated that Swann so cynically compelled to serve him as panders.1992, Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright, translating Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, Folio Society 2005, p. 190. From the entry pander

Meaning of virtuous

  1. adjective Full of virtue; having excellent moral character.

Full definition of virtuous

Questions about virtuous in a sentence

How do you use virtuous in a sentence?
Virtuous is used as an adjective. For example: “Successful communities need strong, selfless leaders and a virtuous people.”
What is a short sentence with virtuous?
“Poetic justice, however, does not make for virtuous vengeance.”
What does virtuous mean?
Virtuous means full of virtue; having excellent moral character.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: virtuous (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use virtuous in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/virtuous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.