Quotes About Vice

No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short, FOR SHEER GRATUITOUS MISERY-PRODUCING POWER this influence stands alone.

Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.

A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure.

All these institutions [prisons] seemed purposely invented for the production of depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and vice broadcast among the whole population.

there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence.

All the wounds of society, the wounds of poverty, of vice, of ignorance—all will be laid bare. Is there not something re-assuring in this?

But if man, as in our society, advances only towards physical love, even though he surrounds it with deceptions and with the shallow formality of marriage, he obtains nothing but licensed vice.

He used to say that there were only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and that there were only two virtues: activity and intelligence.

Out of all the vices, the most difficult is ingratitude.

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom. A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.

It seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to be virtuous.

When parents, in the belief that they are doing the right thing, trample underfoot some ideal that lies latent in the heart of their child they cause, more often than not, to germinate in its place disillusionment, hatred, vice; it is fortunate indeed if the existence thus turned awry does not degrade into a life of crime, instead of one of calm content and universal respect.

If there were two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, who each committed to the same kind of fundamental reform, then the election would be an election between the vice presidential candidates. It'd be just like the regular election, except it would be one step down.

Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is...

What I can claim is that no other work of mine depicts virtue with greater prominence: here the slightest misdemeanour is severely punished; the mere thought of wrongdoing is viewed with as much horror as the enactment of it; lapses that derive from love are treated as absolute failings; the passions are represented only to demonstrate the destructive anarchy to which they give rise; and vice is everywhere portrayed in colours which cause its ugliness to be known for what it is and abhorred.

But if the abberations of foolish youth made me forget suc wise lessons for a time,I have the happiness to sense at last that whatever the inclination one may have toward vice,it is difficult for an education in which the heart is involved to remain forever lost.

it is to this ardor for making oneself the topic of conversation, to this furor to distinguish oneself which nearly always keeps us outside ourselves, that we owe what is best and worst among men, our virtues and vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers, that is to say, a multitude of bad things against a small number of good ones.

Pero la indolencia, el descuido y las dilaciones en los pequeños deberes que tenía que llenar, me han hecho más daño que los grandes vicios.

That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them.

The favorite method of vice is to diss all responsibility be work or social, go off by myself, and enjoy a good steak and a great glass of wine. Oh yeah, and my kids are there too.