Quotes About Vice

The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for satire, but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a diamond.

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust, than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.

A substantial good drawn from a real evil, is of the same benefit to society as if drawn from a virtue; and where men have not public spirit to render themselves serviceable, it ought to be the study of government to draw the best use possible from their vices. When the governing passion of any man, or set of men, is once known, the method of managing them is easy; for even misers, whom no public virtue can impress, would become generous, could a heavy tax be laid upon covetousness.

If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices out of his virtues, and there's a spectacle. We've all seen them: men who were monsters of philanthropy and women who were dragons of purity. ... No, no - nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modesly around it.

In the South of Spain, one could look to vice as quickly as to virtue for a sense of tradition.

When an officer of the law detects a vice in himself, he knows enough to start looking for its presence in others.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

E' fin troppo veroche i nostri vizi ci seducono con la bellezza delle forme esteriori, come la bellezza dei demoni, che i superstiziosi ci rappresentano a congiurare ai danni del genere umano; non si riesce a vederne la innata laidezza finchè non li stringiamo fra le braccia.

The readiest mode to corrupt a Christian man is to bestow upon vice the pity and the praise which are due only to virtue. Your Baron of Roussillon is a monster of cruelty; but your unfortunate lovers were not the less guilty. It is by giving fair names to foul actions that those who would start at real vice are led to practise its lessons, under the disguise of virtue.

The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice

Ay, we are alike, you and I. The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice.

I should do something about the cigarettes I quite accept that it's bad for your health, but you know a moderate tipple is positively beneficial and, at certain times, absolutely essential.

Fuck you," he said, resorting to that last argument of vice presidents.

Vanity I am sensible, is my cardinal Vice and cardinal Folly, and I am in continual Danger, when in Company, of being led an ignis fatuus Chase by it, without the strictest Caution and watchfulness over my self.

Be father to virtue, but father-in-law to vice.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.

We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.

Idleness is the beginning of all vices.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labour to renew...

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

A vice is a harm I do to myself in the pursuit of pleasure.

The excess of virtue is a vice.