Vice Quotes

It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.

Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously

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

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Vice repeated is like the wandering wind, blows dust in others' eyes to spread itself.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

Possessed of courage but devoid of morality, a superior man will make trouble while a small man will be a brigand.

The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.

In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

What maintains one vice would bring up two children.

No man has ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him.

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

Let thy vices die before thee.

A method of procuring sensations? Do you think then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." says Dorian. "Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," says Lord Henry

The avarice of mankind is insatiable.

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.

He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

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

Vanity is the most despotic and iniquitous of masters, and I can never be the slave of my own vices.

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 foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing...is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.

Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly.

Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.

Nonviolence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice - nonviolence springs from love, cowardice from hate.

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

Idleness is the beginning of all psychology. What? Could it be that psychology is ? a vice?

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Selfishness has never been admired.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

The king-becoming graces,As justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,I have no relish of them, but aboundIn the division of each several crime,Acting in many ways.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery: nothing else holds fashion.

Crime and vice generally require darkness for prowling. They disappear when light plays upon them.

I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

I would rather have India reduced to a state of pauperism than have thousands of drunkards in our midst.

Since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice; and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by nature.

As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed .

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the naughtiness of humility.