Quotes About Vice

The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.

Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.

The law courts must appear as a threatening gesture toward secret vice. The bank must declare: here your money is secure and well looked after by honest people.

Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.

Capitalism itself is not to be condemned. And surely it is not vicious of its very nature, but it has been vitiated.

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teachh us vice.

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

Most men call fretting a minor fault, a foible, and not a vice. There is no vice except drunkenness which can so utterly destroy the peace, the happiness of a hoe.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further and try to plant a virtue in its place.

The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it.

If she knew me as I really am she would despise me, and certainly not aid or abet my evil designs. To veil their vices from the sight of the good is the only resource of those who are not blind and know themselves to be vicious.' Thus was I confirmed in habits of hypocrisy; and these, for a time, worked only too effectually to my advantage.

Mutual forgiveness of each vice. Such are the Gates of Paradise.

The whole plot was a sinister drollery, the simple delight of stirring up great crowds to die and kill, of one who could not be swayed by anything himself; the anticipation of the spectacle of fear by one who was terrified at nothing. The vice of a man who had become inhuman by losing his human greed.

Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties.

The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.