Vices Virtues Quotes & Sayings

No man, however enslaved to his appetites, or hurried by his passions, can, while he preserves his intellects unimpaired, please himself with promoting the corruption of others. He whose merit has enlarged his influence would surely wish to exert it for the benefit of mankind. Yet such will be the effect of his reputation, while he suffers himself to indulge in any favourite fault, that they who have no hope to reach his excellence will catch at his failings, and his virtues will be cited to justify the copiers of his vices. — Samuel Johnson

People without any vices rarely have any virtues either. — Abraham Lincoln

Beware of knowing your virtues; you may lose them. Beware of knowing your vices; you may forgive them. — James Richardson

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues. — Plutarch

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues. — Antonio Machado

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

All boys wish to be manly; but they often try to become so by copying the vices of men rather than their virtues. They see men drinking, smoking, swearing; so these poor little fellows sedulously imitate such bad habits, thinking they are making themselves more like men. They mistake rudeness for strength, disrespect to parents for independence. They read wretched stories about boy brigands and boy detectives, and fancy themselves heroes when they break the laws, and become troublesome and mischievous. Out of such false influences the criminal classes are recruited. Many a little boy who only wishes to be manly, becomes corrupted and debased by the bad examples around him and the bad literature which he reads. The cure for this is to give him good books, show him truly noble examples from life and history, and make him understand how infinitely above this mock-manliness is the true courage which ennobles human nature. — James Clarke

We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot. — G.K. Chesterton

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial. — R. H. Tawney

According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices. — Walter Raleigh

The universe is all about balance. The forces of light and darkness are meant to keep a check on one another. If one becomes too powerful and starts overrunning the other, that balance will be upset. For the tyranny of virtue is as unbearable as the stranglehold of vice. — Shatrujeet Nath

The medieval world then is one in which not only is the scheme of the virtues enlarged beyond an Aristotelian perspective, but above all in which the connection between the distinctively narrative element in human life and the character of the vices comes to the forefront of consciousness and not only in biblical terms. — Alasdair MacIntyre

Stimulate the heart to love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices out of his virtues, and there's a spectacle. We've all seen them: men who were monsters of philanthropy and women who were dragons of purity ... No, no - nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modesly around it. — Thornton Wilder

Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths. Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our vices. — Annie Besant

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.] — Winston S. Churchill

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised. — Juvenal

Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings. — Charles Caleb Colton

Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents. — Sir George Savile, 8th Baronet

People always brag about their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they become insufferable. — G.K. Chesterton

Most people indulged in their vices and clung to their virtues based on their responses to temptation and conflict, not because some Other within them drove their behavior. — Dean Koontz

Miracle focused messages propagates social vices instead of social virtues — Sunday Adelaja

Aesthetic culture is not the high-road to all the virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been known to infest it. Neither, on the other hand, is there any special grace in ugliness. Art is only utterance. It must express something; and the vital question is, what does it express? — Lewis Foreman Day

you assume the vices you have not, and conceal the virtues you possess." "My — Alexandre Dumas

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices," Anna began suddenly, "but I hate him for his virtues. I can't live with him. Do you understand? — Leo Tolstoy

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee.
I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.
I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even "set and think." She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

In a secular world, which is what most of us in Europe and North America live in, history takes on the role of showing us good and evil, virtues and vices. Religion no longer plays as important a part as it once did in setting moral standards and transmitting values ... History with a capital H is being called in to fill the void. It restores a sense not necessarily of a divine being but of something above and beyond human beings. It is our authority: it can vindicate us and judge us, and damn those who oppose us. — Margaret MacMillan

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. — T. S. Eliot

Pride is the king of vices ... it is the first of the pallbearers of the soul ... other vices destroy only their opposite virtues, as wantonness destroys chastity; greed destroys temperance; anger destroys gentleness; but pride destroys all virtues. — Fulton J. Sheen

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. — Rene Descartes

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born. — Edward Dahlberg

The plot is certainly sensational, but it hardly represents what actually happened. It is difficult to believe that the European emigrants by whom America has been populated took away with them all the virtues and left behind them all the vices of the races from which they had sprung; or that a few generations of residence on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is sufficient to create an order of beings definitely superior in morals, in culture, and in humanity to their prototypes in Europe. The American — Winston S. Churchill

Nature evaluates a character on the basis of its merits, not demerits. — Raheel Farooq

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues. — Elizabeth Taylor

Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state might be composed of slaves, or the animal creation ... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse. But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous. — Aristotle.

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices - the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered - the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation. — Clifford D. Simak

So what the hell's wrong with me?" Nyx eased off the marble slab.
"Besides your deviant moral flexibility and severe phobia of emotional commitment?" Yahfia asked.
"I consider those virtues," Nyx said. — Kameron Hurley

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia. — Ambrose Bierce

Yes, my particular virtue of being very often objective, and thus sidetracked from thinking about myself, suffers lapses of affirmation, as do all virtues and even all vices. — Fernando Pessoa

What is it with these prophets? Almost without exception ordinary men, some of them with more vices than virtues, suddenly they were touched with fire.

Is it that a man sees best the stars when he is prone? — Little Pigeon

From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought. — Victor Hugo

No distinction is 'tween man and man,
But as his virtues add to him a glory
Or vices cloud him. — William Habington

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered ... it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. — G.K. Chesterton

Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow. — Aleister Crowley

Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways. — Thomas Lickona

Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad. — Maya Angelou

Literature, in fact, had been concerned with virtues and vices of a perfectly healthy sort, the regular functioning of brains of a normal conformation, the practical reality of current ideas, with never a thought for morbid depravities and other-worldly aspirations; in short, the discoveries of these anaylists of human nature stopped short at the speculations good or bad, classified by the church; their efforts amounted to no more than the humdrum researches of a botanist who watches closely the expected development of ordinary flora planted in common or garden soil. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem. — William Dunbar

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail. — Walter Lippmann

Restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert. — Robert Louis Stevenson

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life. — Orson Scott Card

You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. — Ayn Rand

For as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions, so all the virtues that have been ever in mankind are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. — Jonathan Swift

one who possessed Beauty without Vanity,"' he said aloud to Barnabas. '"Strength without Insolence, / Courage without Ferocity, / And all the virtues of Man without his Vices. — Jan Karon

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster. — Rebecca West

It is not the stars that make us, Dr. Butts, it is circumstance and necessita, the choices we make under pressure; our virtues make us, but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times. Or don't you agree? — Hilary Mantel

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. — George Bernard Shaw

Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. — Victor Hugo

Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution. — Alec Guinness

Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

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. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Conniving at your friends' vices, passing them over, being blind to them and deceived by them, even loving and admiring your friends' egregious faults as if they were virtues -- does not this seem pretty close to folly? — Erasmus

Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success. — Napoleon Bonaparte

You hate America, don't you?'
That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will. — Kurt Vonnegut

Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices. — Richard Whately

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft. — Walter Bagehot

Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly. — Raymond E. Feist

To each virtue there is an opposing vice; hence the wicked take vices for virtues. — Saint Nikodimos

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

Do not say that the past was better than the present. Virtues are what make the good times and vices that go bad. — Augustine Of Hippo

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

No society can survive if it allows its members to behave toward one another in the same way in which it encourages them to behave as a group toward other groups; internal cooperation is the first law of external competition. The struggle for existence is not ended by mutual aid, it is incorporated, or transferred to the group. Other things equal, the ability to compete with rival groups will be proportionate to the ability of the individual members and families to combine with one another.
Hence every society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual, as its secret allies and aides, social dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages by calling them virtues those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices.
In this way the individual is in some outward measure socialized, and the animal becomes a citizen. — Will Durant

Live by old Ethicks and the classical Rules of Honesty. Put no new names or notions upon Authentick Virtues and Vices. Think not that Morality is Ambulatory; that Vices in one age are not Vices in another; or that Virtues, which are under the everlasting Seal of right Reason, may be Stamped by Opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert the opinion of things, and set up a new Ethicks against Virtue, yet hold thou unto old Morality; and rather than follow a multitude to do evil, stand like Pompey's pillar conspicuous by thyself, and single in Example of Virtue; since no Deluge of Vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape; Eye well those Heroes who have held their Heads above Water, who have touched Pitch, and have not been defiled, and in the common Contagion have remained uncorrupted. — Thomas Browne

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices. — Charles Caleb Colton

To conquer your nature is better than to conquer the whole world. — Matshona Dhliwayo

We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this. — Holbrook Jackson

Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put. — Mignon McLaughlin

No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil. — Roger Rosenblatt

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health. — Charles Caleb Colton

People don't have their virtues and vices in sets: they have them anyhow: all mixed. — George Bernard Shaw

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues. — Plato

Jews are a singular confusion - difficult to define, awkward to describe, impossible to understand. All the virtues, all the vices, every pleasure, every pain - nothing is spared them. — Israel Shenker

A habit is a stable disposition to act in a certain way, good or evil. Virtues are good habits; vices are bad habits. — Peter Kreeft

It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians , whose virtues have been those of peace , and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny and it has been bitter whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe. — Lord Byron

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. — T. S. Eliot

New York, I thought, was a city defined by its flaws. In every possible way, its virtues were overwhelmed by its vices, as Jekyll was by Hyde. Yet it was these very vices that gave the city its character - like tar in an oak barrel lending its flavor to Scotch. — Miles Watson

Vain mistaken mortals, who, valuing themselves on names and titles, suppose that the virtues of the mind must be attached to an empty sound, when every day's experience proves that birth is disgraced, titles rendered contemptible, and riches a curse, by the vices, meanness, and dissipation of its possessors! — Eliza Parsons

Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man, without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the memory of Botswain, a dog. — George Gordon Byron

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. — Denis Diderot

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,
vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. — Henry Fielding

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and
our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our
souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect.
Only since animals are mere shadows, God has not made them
capable of education in the full sense of the word; what is the
use? On the contrary, our souls being realities and having a
210
goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on them
intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social
education, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of
whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains. — Victor Hugo

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

Changing prejudice often inverts the value of words while preserving most of their sense; virtues are turned into vices, artistic qualities become defects. — John Shearman

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. — Abraham Lincoln

It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer this distress for their vices, or for their virtues: the knight's sole responsibility is to succour them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Academia is alas full of special interests and specialists who presumed it was possible to "leapfrog" over this or that entire line of development. These minds hoped to distance themselves from the pernicious vices of a whole way of thinking, but of course at the same time excluded all of its virtues too. Modern abstractivism in its simplex form (which does not preclude a high degree of articulate facility within the ambit of what is preconceived and accepted). — Kenny Smith

The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices — Paul Valery

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices. — George Bernard Shaw