Vice Quotes

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

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

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.

Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.

I hate ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood".

The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.

Avoid dishonest gain: no price can recompence the pangs of vice.

Indeed envy is a defect; worse than any other.

If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed (from friendship).[Lat., Assentatio, vitiorum adjutrix, procul amoveatur.]

Nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice.

Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. 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.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

I don't believe in any form of unjustified extremism! But when a man is exercising extremism -- a human being is exercising extremism -- in defense of liberty for human beings it's no vice, and when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings I say he is a sinner.

Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.

What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.

Moderation is the feebleness and sloth of the soul, whereas ambition is the warmth and activity of it.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Pride eradicates all vices but itself.

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.

Pride is said to be the last vice the good man gets clear of.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

Envy is as evil a thing as arrogance.

If I quake, what matters it what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors.

It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.

Everything runs to excess; every good quality is noxious if unmixed.

That roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.

Let's not talk so much about vice. I'm against vice in all forms.

Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.

Gluttony and drunkenness have two evils attendant on them; they make the carcass smart, as well as the pocket.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

All flatterers are mercenary, and all low-minded men are flatterers.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

The vices come as passengers, visit us as guest and stay as masters.

A full Belly is the Mother of all Evil.

Wickedness is nourished by lust.

Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice.

Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; Filths savour but themselves.

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave.

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.

There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

For in the fatness of these pursy timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices - open-handedness - to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits stepped in; and as one poison will sometimes neutralise another, when wholesome remedies would not avail, so he was restrained by a bad passion from quaffing his full measure of evil, when virtue might have sought to hold him back in vain.

Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many it is almost a vice.

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.

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.