"Every good quality runs into a defect;..." - Quote by Victor Hugo

“Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.”

“But when ill indeed, Even dismissing the doctor don't always succeed.”

“Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.”

“How great is the path proper to the Sage! Like overflowing water, it sends forth and nourishes all things, and rises up to the height of heaven. All-complete is its greatness! It embraces the three hundred rules of ceremony, and the three thousand rules of demeanor. It waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden. Hence it is said, 'Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact.'”

“What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.”

“Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.”

“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.”

“Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.”

“When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.”