Sales {{quote box|width=30%| "[Before its publication, Bennett recalled,] skeptics in the publishing industry predicted, 'No sex, no picturesit won't sell.'"
Virtues debuted at #13 on
The New York Times Best Seller List (Nonfiction) for December 26, 1993. It secured the #1 spot during its fourth week (on January 16, 1994), and remained on the chart for 88 consecutive weeks by late 1995, the 30th-longest run as of 2014. Bennett's accomplishment, in Dionne's opinion, "suggests that beneath our fascination with the prurient, the tasteless and the outrageous lies a yearning for something betterespecially for our kids." (amid low expectations on the publisher's part Benefitting from word of mouth, helping it become one of the bestselling titles of the 1990s he purchased a
North Carolina residence he dubbed as "the beach house virtue built". a perspective that would later be concurred during the run of its
animated adaptation. Still, with the first installment having reached less than 1% of the U.S. population by November of the previous year, he hoped for another organization to distribute it royalty-free for wider readership.
Reviews {{quote box|width=36%| "I know that some of these stories will strike some contemporary sensibilities as too simple, too corny, too old-fashioned. But they will not seem so to the child, especially if he or she has never seen them before. And I believe that if adults take this book and read it in a quiet place, alone, away from distorting standards, they will find themselves enjoying some of this old, simple, 'corny' stuff. The stories we adults used to know and forgotor the stories we never did know but perhaps were supposed to knoware here." From the time of its original publication, response to
The Book of Virtues was mixed. In January 1994,
The Washington Post carried two separate reviews by
Laura Sessions Stepp and
E. J. Dionne. While commending Bennett on leaving out the more serious issues stated in his introduction, Sessions Stepp was otherwise critical. "Several flaws," she said, "limit its appeal. One serious weakness is that despite its heft,
The Book of Virtues is far too narrow, drawing almost exclusively from classical Western sources. This is a primer that reflects the philosophy of [students] in a Catholic boys' school." Barbara Hall of
The Baltimore Sun was more positive, saying, "[Within its pages,] there are so many terrific discoveries and re-discoveries here that it's difficult to pick favorites ... It is a formidable work by an editor who will be reckoned with now and for generations to come."
Digby Anderson wrote in the
National Review, "Mr. Bennett has created a treasury no conservative parent would want to be without." The collection was reviewed twice by
Human Events magazine: one contributor listed it among the "best conservative books" of its year, and another called it "a culture capsule that if unearthed thousands of years from now could explain the values that have not only made America great, but shaped the lives of [various] people today and in centuries past ... [It] deserves a place on every bookshelf, coffee table or bedside table." Although otherwise favorable, Jean Porter of
The Christian Century commended the variety in the passages and Bennett's selection process, but said that his "anthology is not the brave, countercultural document that some of his admirers take it to be." The diversity and timeframe of
Virtues selections faced occasional criticism. Henry L. Carrigan Jr. wrote in
Library Journal that the quality "ranges from the great to the schmaltzy" Its tendency to stress slavery and racial equality, Nussbaum noted, "undercuts many of the book's more complacent utterances." while Dan P. McAdams and Jack J. Bauer nominated
gratitude six years later. Susan Moore in the
IPA Review of
Melbourne, Australia, said, "Almost all the verse in
The Book of Virtues is of greeting card calibre; and too many of the prose selections, penned by unknown authors, are similarly hackneyed. Bennett lacks the ear which helps talented editors to distinguish immediately between the moralistic and the compellingly moral ... Despite [a slate of] embarrassing weaknesses, however, Bennett's book is a helpful starting point for adults who share his awareness that 'children are essentially moral and spiritual beings' who deserve to experience a much richer literature than, of late, they have been given." Moore also criticized the "watered-down" and "disappointing" retellings of the older material at hand, along with the "saccharine poems" being at odds with "powerful" selections. in 1997, when he confessed to smoking before and after his duties as "Drug Czar"; Several also acknowledged the influence of the
McGuffey line Bennett sought to emulate, and the
bowdlerization of some of the stories collected. Gillespie felt that the anthology exhibited a "gentler, kinder" side of Bennett when compared to his activity as "Drug Czar", but the compiler dropped out by August 1994. ==Legacy==