Quotes About Vice

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but- what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices.

Vice: Whatever was passion in the contemplation of man, being brought forth by his will into action.

Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.

As a stick, when once it is dry and stiff you may break it, but you can never bend it into a straighter posture; so doth the man become incorrigible who is settled and stiffened into vice.

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.

I have always thought it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than a greedy, narrow-minded, pitiless merchant.

This is the essential evil of vice: it debases a man.

Some persons, by hating vice too much, come to love men too little. Hatred is self-punishment. Hatred is the cowards revenge for being intimidated.

A man given to vice is always an idealist.

In Anglo-Saxon countries the prostitutes look as if they purveyed, along with sin, the attendant pains of hell.

Most men and women must suppress the good within them to be evil; just as, to be good, they must suppress the evil. There is no final victory of one or the other. Indeed

Like all other virtues, patriotism when carried to excess becomes a vice; but that does not mean that patriotism is incompatible with respect for others.

Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man.

Affirmative precepts are distinguished from negative whenever one is not comprised in the other; thus, that of honoring parents does not comprise that of not killing, and vice versa.

Pleasure was pain there, and vice versa. And he knew it well enough to call it home.

Every man with his own peculiar vice. His will hardly rock heaven or hell.

For everyone death has a look. Death will come with your eyes. It will be like terminating a vice, as seen in the mirror a dead face re-emerging, like listening to closed lips. We'll go down the abyss in silence. — Cesar Pavese, from "Death Will Come With Your Eyes," Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi . Translation by Linh Dinh (Einaudi 1966) Originally published 1951.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.