There are three, the sages teach, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, singles out by name and calls virtuous. The first is the unmarried man who lives in a great city and does not sin. The second is the poor man who finds a lost object and returns it to its owner, though nothing would stop him from keeping it. The third is the rich man who pays the tithes of his increase without making a show of his generosity.
The Talmud tells of Rav Saphra, a bachelor who lived in a bustling city. Once, in the presence of Rava, a student began praising the celibate life, and Rav Saphra's face lit up with quiet pride. Rava noticed and set him straight. "This teaching does not refer to a bachelor like you," he said. "It refers to men like Rabbi Chanena and Rabbi Oshaia."
Those two were shoemakers who worked on a street where prostitutes lived and were their customers. When the women came for fittings, the rabbis measured and adjusted the shoes and never once lifted their eyes to look at a face. Their discipline became so famous that the women themselves, when they wanted to swear a binding oath, would swear "by the life of the holy rabbis of the land of Israel" (Pesachim 113a-b).
Virtue, the story insists, is not the absence of temptation. It is the eye that refuses to wander when temptation is at arm's length.