What's the difference between mercy and virtue?

Mercy


Definition:

  • (n.) Forbearance to inflict harm under circumstances of provocation, when one has the power to inflict it; compassionate treatment of an offender or adversary; clemency.
  • (n.) Compassionate treatment of the unfortunate and helpless; sometimes, favor, beneficence.
  • (n.) Disposition to exercise compassion or favor; pity; compassion; willingness to spare or to help.
  • (n.) A blessing regarded as a manifestation of compassion or favor.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The law and justice minister, Anisul Huq, said the 73-year-old leader was hanged after he refused to seek mercy from the country’s president.
  • (2) But if May rushes headlong into a panicked triggering of article 50 without a clear idea of what she wants out of negotiations, she will have left us at the mercy of 27 countries who have heard little but table-thumping and empty threats from ministers.
  • (3) He called for care for the environment to be added to the seven spiritual works of mercy outlined in the Gospel that the faithful are asked to perform throughout the pope’s year of mercy in 2016.
  • (4) But Ruby Tweedie, another local resident, said: "There have been so many doubts about his guilt that it's only fair that the man, who has only a few months to live, should be shown mercy."
  • (5) Constant ribbing about his private life was compromising Deayton's position as the show's "holier-than-thou" host, who showed no mercy towards politicians or celebrities caught in a similar position, the corporation added.
  • (6) The 70-year-old describes a life of comfortable detachment from mainstream society, but with long periods in which he and his 74-year-old wife, Shin-yeol, are at the mercy of the elements.
  • (7) We're kind of at Mother Nature's mercy at this point," said Tom Kruschke, another fire department spokesman .
  • (8) Without him, we were at the mercy of increasingly nervous investors, and our Hollywood film-making future hung in the balance.
  • (9) Students of privatisation over the years have learnt to be grateful for small mercies.
  • (10) The mayor is a good person, but no one invited him, certainly not officially … The pope was furious.” While the prank provided fodder to critics of the mayor, it also underscored a more serious issue between the Vatican and Rome just a few months ahead of the church’s jubilee year of mercy, which begins on 8 December.
  • (11) The only mercy was they would have known little about it.
  • (12) After Hollande spent two hours on French radio in a patent relaunch of his presidency, a film producer announced that a biopic of Trierweiler’s revenge memoir, Merci Pour Ce Moment (Thank You For This Moment), is now in the works.
  • (13) Hunt replied: "Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have coffee like old days!"
  • (14) "The legal system has lost all sense of mercy and justice and it has been replaced with punitiveness and vindictiveness," Stinebrickner-Kauffman told Mail Online .
  • (15) If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.
  • (16) It was not something that was talked about.” Thomson added: “It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised I quite simply couldn’t escape – because he was stronger than me, and there was no sense even initially of any sexual desire from him, which I suppose, looking back, again I find odd.” The MP said she had felt “absolutely numbed” and ashamed but told no one about the incident.
  • (17) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
  • (18) This meant that if the rebels started abusing people, the Misca would withdraw, leaving the civilian population at their mercy.
  • (19) Sitting in a side street listening to the sound of loud blasts and gunfire emanating from Nariman House, Rakash Bhaud, the local leader of the far-right Hindu party Shiv Sena, blamed the central government for the failures that, he said, had left them at the mercy of Pakistan-backed terrorists.
  • (20) More emphasis on mercy is needed in this case, surely, and less on killing.

Virtue


Definition:

  • (n.) Manly strength or courage; bravery; daring; spirit; valor.
  • (n.) Active quality or power; capacity or power adequate to the production of a given effect; energy; strength; potency; efficacy; as, the virtue of a medicine.
  • (n.) Energy or influence operating without contact of the material or sensible substance.
  • (n.) Excellence; value; merit; meritoriousness; worth.
  • (n.) Specifically, moral excellence; integrity of character; purity of soul; performance of duty.
  • (n.) A particular moral excellence; as, the virtue of temperance, of charity, etc.
  • (n.) Specifically: Chastity; purity; especially, the chastity of women; virginity.
  • (n.) One of the orders of the celestial hierarchy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue.
  • (2) Dermatoglyphic alterations in schizophrenic patients are considered in virtue of literature data and the author's own investigations.
  • (3) Since the enzyme requires a metal ion (Co2+) we suggest that the RNA and heparin are inhibitory by virtue of their capacity to chelate the Co2+.
  • (4) Given the liberalist context in which we live, this paper argues that an act-oriented ethics is inadequate and that only a virtue-oriented ethics enables us to recognize and resolve the new problems ahead of us in genetic manipulation.
  • (5) The results indicate that ACTH can alter pain sensitivity and that the effect of corticosteroids on the sensitivity to pain is an indirect one by virtue of their negative feed-back action on the hypothalamic-pituitary system.
  • (6) This test by virtue of its high sensitivity and the facilities in processing a large number of specimens, can prove to be useful in endemic areas for the recognition of asymptomatic malaria and screening of blood donors.
  • (7) The fitting element to a Cabrera victory would have been thus: the final round of the 77th Masters fell on the 90th birthday of Roberto De Vicenzo, the great Argentine golfer who missed out on an Augusta play-off by virtue of signing for the wrong score.
  • (8) The corresponding delta FeCO modes are identified at 574 and 566 cm-1, respectively, by virtue of the zigzag pattern of their isotopic shifts.
  • (9) All lesions but one were located extradurally, and patients with Stage D2 disease, by virtue of bony metastases, were therefore at greatest risk for development of neurologically compressive disease.
  • (10) By virtue of the technique, minimal incision surgery lends itself to a greater risk of causing epidermal inclusion cysts.
  • (11) Tumors of ceruminous gland origin appear to have a distinctive clinical behavior by virtue of their unique anatomical location in the external auditory canal.
  • (12) Proteases substituted with biotin were targeted via the cationic protein avidin A, which by virtue of its charge has affinity for the glomerular basement membrane.
  • (13) The study is based on 220 children from 91 families at high- and low-risk for major depression by virtue of the presence or absence of major depression in their parents.
  • (14) Our findings indicate that DFO has antileukemic properties by virtue of its effects on proliferation and differentiation, and they prompt further experimental and clinical studies with this agent.
  • (15) He will only be able to satisfy all the expectations if he masters, by virtue of his training and experience, the art of setting up a treatment plan with priorities.
  • (16) Although it is less selective than D-[3H]aspartate, DL-[3H]AP5 and [3H]NMDA, L-[3H]glutamate remains, by virtue of its high affinity, the ligand of choice for the study of NMDA receptors in preparations where such sites predominate.
  • (17) We postulated that the contraction by virtue of focal calcium release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and was stimulated this process together with the processes of diffusion into the cytosol, binding to calmodulin and troponin, sequestration by the SR, and subsequent induction of Ca2+ release from the adjacent SR.
  • (18) Murdoch had one on his, of course, but because he was facing hostile interrogation he looked (unfairly) as if he were wearing it in self-protection as a symbol of his own virtue.
  • (19) Second, by virtue of their effects against rigor and spasticity, NMDA antagonists may reduce increased muscle tone and prevent rhabdomyolysis.
  • (20) Most critical are (a) how hardiness is to be measured; (b) whether hardiness should be treated as a unitary phenomenon or as three separate phenomena associated with commitment, control, and challenge; and (c) whether hardiness has direct effects on health or indirect effects by virtue of buffering the impact of stressful life events.