Quotes & Sayings About Vices

One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones. — Bret Harte

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

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

Every brave man is a man of his word; to such base vices he cannot stoop, and shuns more than death the shame of lying. — Pierre Corneille

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. — Thomas Jefferson

My pleasures disappeared with my vices. — Hanif Kureishi

Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart. — Charles Caleb Colton

If it had been any different, if I had been born just one minute later, or been in the wrong pace at the right time or vice versa, the life that I've lived and come to love would not exist. And that is a situation that I would not want to consider in the slightest. — Slash

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner. — Francis Bacon

It is unnatural that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain its vices are but a continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral honor and good political principles, cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts, by which such elections are carried. To be a successful candidate, he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator: and being thus disciplined to corruption it is not to be expected that the representative should be better than the man. — Thomas Paine

Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice? — Luc De Clapiers

For there's no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman's part. — William Shakespeare

And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand.
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tattered clothes great vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend - none, I say, none. I'll able 'em.
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal th' accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes,
And like a scurvy politician seem
To see the things thou dost not. — William Shakespeare

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean. — Aristotle.

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous. — Lin Yutang

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

True sense of humour and true, deep happiness never depend on the after effects of destructive vices — Angelica Hopes

As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them. — Tench Coxe

Whatever vices and corruptions men see in the lives of their ministers will not be attributed to the depravity of their old nature which still abides in them, but to the gospel. — John Owen

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes. — Marquis De Sade

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice. — Lord Byron

In condemning, therefore, the vices of a father, a truly pious son will subscribe to God's Law; and still, whatsoever he may be, will acknowledge that he is to be honored, as being the father given him by God. — John Calvin

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

Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously — Elbert Hubbard

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

I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell. — Oscar Wilde

It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures. — Marquis De Sade

All the vices, Sancho, bring some kind of pleasure with them; but envy brings nothing but irritation, bitterness, and rage. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Virtue is voluntary, vice involuntary. — Plato

I am not interested in being vice president of the United States. I've let the candidate know. If the candidate asks me to be vice president, the answer is I got to say yes. But he's not going to ask me. — Brian Williams

What once were vices are manners now. — Seneca The Younger

Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on. — Richard Whately

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

All ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices; and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men's charity or their generosity. — David Hume

I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else that has ever happened, and vice versa. — Frank Zappa

I'm thoroughly addicted to you, Becca. If I don't get a regular fix of your body, I might go into withdrawal."
"That's a very serious condition. Maybe we should wean you off that addiction."
"Oh, no. I'm happily addicted. I don't have many vices, you know. I don't really drink, don't smoke, I'm not into partying or anything like that. But you? I'm very much into you. I wouldn't give you up for anything."
"Well, in that case, we'd better make sure you get your fix, Mr. Dorsey. I wouldn't want you to go into withdrawal."
"No, we wouldn't want that. it'd be bad."
"What are the symptoms of withdrawal, just so I know what to look for?"
"Well, I tend to get cranky, that's the firs thing. I get really horny, and it's hard for me to concentrate."
"I see. And what's the best method of giving you a fix?"
"I'm not particular."
"So if you touched me, right here in this parking lot, that would help you? — Jasinda Wilder

We have observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is a sign on the door of our face that says 'Herein dwells a man who is intelligent, prudent, courteous, affable, noble-minded and generous'. A small nose is a cork on the bottle of the opposite vices. — Cyrano De Bergerac

I was really suffering from my resolutions much more than from my [vices]. I ought to try and cure myself without making any resolutions. According to him my personality in the course of years had become divided in two, one of which gave orders while the other was only a slave which, directly when the supervision was relaxed, disobeyed the master's orders out of sheer love of liberty. So what I ought to do was to give it absolute freedom and at the same time look my vice in the face as if it was something new and I were meeting it for the first time. I must not fight it, I must forget it, and treat it with complete indifference, turning my back on it as if it were not worthy to keep me company. — Italo Svevo

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge
he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil
he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor
he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire
he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy
all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is desired to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was
that robot of the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love
he was not man. — Ayn Rand

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

One of my last few vices is coffee, but with a spot of almond or soymilk, it's never tasted better! — Michelle Forbes

Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices ... It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything. And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth ... — Peter Damian

Some virtuous women are too liberal in their insults to a frail sister; but virtue can support itself without borrowing any assistance from the vices of other women. — Henry Fielding

Drunkenness does not create vice; it merely brings it into view. — Seneca The Younger

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous. — Jane Porter

One of the most evil dispositions possible is that which satirizes and turns everything to ridicule. God abhors this vice, and has sometimes punished it in a marked manner — Saint Francis De Sales

Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other. — Edwin Newman

It's a vice to trust all, and equally a vice to trust none. — Seneca The Younger

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

If our life is to resemble the gospel, we must shun, not merely the grosser vices, but everything that would hinder our perfect conformity to Christ. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. — Seneca.

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

Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? — Henry David Thoreau

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

Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed. — Alexander Pope

As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices. — John Locke

Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. — Ayn Rand

It has been said that men carry on a kind of coasting trade with religion. In the voyage of life, they profess to be in search of heaven, but take care not to venture so far in their approximations to it, as entirely to lose sight of the earth; and should their frail vessel be in danger of shipwreck, they will gladly throw their darling vices overboard, as other mariners their treasures, only to fish them up again when the storm is over. — Charles Caleb Colton

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least. — Horace

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

The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success. — C.S. Lewis

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

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. — Thomas B. Macaulay

He discovered in his heart the first faint whispering of pure Christianity, and in some way he continued to keep his virtue intact by keeping his vices active. — Thorne Smith

Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it. — John Adams

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

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices. — Mikhail Bulgakov

An individual can be hurt in countless ways by other men's irrationality, dishonesty, injustice. Above all, he can be disappointed, perhaps grievously, by the vices of a person he had once trusted or loved. But as long as his property is not expropriated and he remains unmolested physically, the damage he sustains is essentially spiritual, not physical; in such a case, the victim alone has the power and the responsibility of healing his wounds. He remains free: free to think, to learn from his experiences, to look elsewhere for human relationships; he remains free to start afresh and to pursue his happiness. — Leonard Peikoff

Civilization is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease. — Charles Fourier

Be at war with men's vices, at peace with themselves. — Publilius Syrus

Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic. — Edmund Burke

All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members. — Morris West

Space is space,life is life,everywhere is the same. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with which to fill my leisure, I pamper my melancholy and try to find in the vacuousness of the desert a special historical poignancy. Vain, idle, misguided! How fortunate that no one sees me! — J.M. Coetzee

Nothing can tell us so much about the general lawlessness of humanity as a perfect acquaintance with our own immoderate behavior. If we would think over our own impulses, we would recognize in our own souls the guiding principle of all vices which we reproach in other people; and if it is not in our very actions, it will be present at least in our impulses. There is no malice that self-love will not offer to our spirits so that we may exploit any occasion, and there are few people virtuous enough not to be tempted. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don't share ideas. — Dorothy Nevill

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

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

Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure — Patrick Henry

Moral virtue is a mean ... between two vices, one of excess and the other of defect; ... it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything. — Aristotle.

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace. — Hermann Hesse

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

Dancing is why I love music as much as I do and vice-versa, and there aren't many things better than those two combined. — Dianna Agron

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food. — Henry Fielding

Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody. — Osamu Dazai

There are good one-day players, there are good Test players and vice versa — Trevor Bailey

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship is given us by nature, not to favor vice, but to aid virtue. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

there is nothing so bad as a reformed anything, be it gambler, drunkard, or lecher. They are aye harder on folks wi' their vices than someone without them would be." Sir — Marion Chesney

Slavery is the parent of ignorance, and ignorance begets a whole brood of follies and vices; and every one of these is inevitably hostile to literary culture. — Hinton Rowan Helper

Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury. — Alexander Von Humboldt

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices — Ayn Rand

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