Vices Quotes

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

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite. ~ Aristotle.

All the vices lead to fortune when they are joined with the vilest of all
avarice. This is the secret of life. ~ Edouard Rene De Laboulaye

Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, "who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint. ~ William B. Irvine

Rousseau's ideas brought about-he moved the political process to the very centre of human existence by making the legislator, who is also a pedagogue, into the new Messiah, capable of solving all human problems by creating New Men. 'Everything,' he wrote, 'is at root dependent on politics.' Virtue is the product of good government. 'Vices belong less to man, than to man badly governed.' The political process, and the new kind of state it brings into being, are the universal remedies for the ills of mankind.49 Politics will do all. Rousseau thus prepared the blueprint for the principal delusions and follies of the twentieth century. ~ Paul Johnson

I have known persons without a friend
never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies. ~ William Hazlitt

NATURE'S LAWS
There are virtues and vices in every person. It's your choice what you want to see. The same will multiply in your life a thousandfold. ~ Sirshree

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out. ~ Harold Rosenberg

O Lord, I wish to promote thy holy religion which is dreadfully neglected. I am desirous to save young persons from the vices of the age. ~ Sarah Trimmer

The Lord sometimes allows people who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices; and this is in order to prevent them from falling into a still greater sin-pride. Your temptation will pass and you will spend the remaining days of your life in humility. Only do not forget your sin. ~ Seraphim Of Sarov

Vice is but a nurse of agonies. ~ Philip Sidney

The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue. ~ William Hazlitt

You know, Sarah Palin is the Governor of Alaska, you know that. And she's a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. So great, is what I'm thinking, another vice president that shoots a drinking buddy; just get ready. ~ David Letterman

The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues. ~ John Calvin

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth. ~ Lysander Spooner

He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up. His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal
and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile. The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living
without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness. Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices. He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things. ~ T.H. White

We play some smaller songs larger than they are the record, and vice versa. It took me a while to get used to playing live. ~ Iron & Wine

The passions of the young are vices in the old. ~ Joseph Joubert

Virtue hath no tongue to check vice's pride. ~ John Milton

Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions and emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect. ~ Aristotle.

Extremism is the pursuit of the presidency is an unpardonable vice. Moderation in the affairs of the nation is the highest virtue. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The current political dispensation in the country takes pride in its affiliations with religion and culture. But unfortunately, they have become a corporate government more than a moral government. Religion to them does not mean the supremacy of moral, family and social values prescribed by religion, but hatred based on religious identity. If they can revisit their strategy, and take a bold stand against social vices, almost all the religious communities of the country, which means more than 95 pc of the people, will be standing behind them. But unfortunately, they stand for the rest 5 per cent. ~ Javed Jamil

A vice is a failure of desire ~ Gerald Stanley Lee

The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other. ~ David Hume

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed . ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done. ~ Dennis Miller

Fortune is an evil chain to the body, and vice to the soul. ~ Epictetus

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel. ~ William Hazlitt

The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. ~ Plutarch

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.

Ponder the fact that God has made you a gardener, to root out vice and plant virtue. ~ St. Catherine Of Siena

Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity. ~ Jon Foreman

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Our vices are attempts to combine self-medication and enjoyment. ~ Mason Cooley

Nobody can return to you something that was never yours, to begin with. Let's trace back to the history of your race: the humans were made for slavery and were found faulty for that purpose. They showed immense energy and willpower only when confronted against tremendous obstacles with no weapons in their hands. With those bare hands, and the wits that exceeded even those of their creators and equalled the ones of mighty gods, they could break mountains. Once the humans earned at least a bit of benevolence from their creators, though, they'd immediately turn into lazy drunkards feasting upon the luxuries of life. They were quite haughty creatures, at that – one could never make them work without posing a certain purpose before their eyes. They should be given an aim they approved of, or else, they'd move no finger! Yet, if such necessities were met, they'd begin to loaf around. Forbidding them to taste those luxuries? Nay, they obeyed not! Hence, their creators cast them down on Earth – a planet inhabited by many other faulty experiments of different alien species, so that their lives would end. Yet even here, the humans defied their creators – instead of dying out, they adapted to the environment they were cast in, due to their boundless wits and the unexplainable willpower that no other species could ever possess. They mated the local species whom they could more or less find a common language with, killed off the obstacles, and conquered the planet as their own. The conque ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

If the election had turned out differently, I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book 'Going Rogaine.' ~ Sarah Palin

But he had something else to curse
his own viscious folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies and vices do when their promptings have long passed away. ~ George Eliot

ANGELO

From thee, even from thy virtue!
What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live!
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.

-- Measure for Measure, II, ii ~ William Shakespeare

Vice knows she is ugly, so puts on her mask. ~ Benjamin Franklin

A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him. ~ Brendan Behan

A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power. ~ John Adams

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa. ~ Honore De Balzac

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. ~ Aristotle.

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable. ~ Ambrose Bierce

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. ~ G.K. Chesterton

My biggest vice is playing solitaire on my iPad. It's bad. I mean, it's ridiculous. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

The passions are the seeds of vices as well as of virtues, from which either may spring, accordingly as they are nurtured. Unhappy they who have never been taught the art to govern them! ~ Ann Radcliffe

The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness. ~ Paul Goodman

Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice; there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

I grant this mode of secluding boys from the intercourse of private families has a tendency to make them scholars, but our business is to make them men, citizens, and Christians. The vices of young people are generally learned from each other. The vices of adults seldom infect them. By separating them from each other, therefore, in their hours of relaxation from study, we secure their morals from a principal source of corruption, while we improve their manners by subjecting them to those restraints which the difference of age and sex naturally produce in private families. ~ Benjamin Rush

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course. ~ Alexander Haig

If you have ever been accused of being rude when you were merely stating the truth, or called a gossip because you like to dwell on other people's actions, Westacott is for you. His linked studies of everyday vices offer elegant analysis of the goods that lurk in behavior that is usually condemned. This wise book is practical philosophy in the best sense. ~ Mark Kingwell

When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly. ~ Paul Krugman

I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind. ~ John Donne

No man can cause more grief than the one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancesters. ~ William Faulkner

I don't drink anymore ... I freeze it and eat it like a popsicle. ~ Dean Martin

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

The notion of good and bad is only in people's minds for there is only virtue and excess. Happiness and wisdom are virtues, sadness and foolishness are vices. "Good and bad" is an ethical judgment of "decent" persons, and criticizing is their vice. ~ Insidious Nocturne

But that is the way of life, and that was but one of the first times, among no few to come, that I was taught a useful lesson about how appearances trump truth, and how villains hide their vices behind masks of piety, honour, and decency. And that to denounce evildoers without proof, attack them with weapons, trust blindly in reason or justice, is often the fastest road toward one's own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remained untouched. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

You cannot give the vice president the authority to declassify specific information and then turn around and say he can just give carte blanche to an assistant of his to declassify whatever he wants. ~ Joe Biden

Life works on strange laws of nature (Karma).
One never knows when a friend turns enemy & vice-versa.
Rely on your Self; self-reliance ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Nothing holds love together like shared vice or collusive perversion. ~ Glen Duncan

Why, then, does this burning zeal for God, for the Church, and for the salvation of souls - burning I say, literally, with fire and faggot - pass by those moral vices and wickednesses, without any chastisement, which are acknowledged by all men to be diametrically opposite to the profession of Christianity, and bend all its nerves either to the introducing of ceremonies, or to the establishment of opinions, which for the most part are about nice and intricate matters, that exceed the capacity of ordinary understandings? ~ John Locke

If the title of a great man ought to be reserved for him who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice, who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle
this title will not be denied to Washington. ~ Jared Sparks

My worst vice is also my best vice. It's my empathy and my love for people-it can wear me out. I rarely can turn a person in need down or because I love people, I love energy. ~ Meredith Brooks

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. ~ Samuel Johnson

Many people wake up in middle age with the realization that in their youthful romances and early marriages, they were drawn to precisely the kinds of partners they were trying to avoid. All too often we marry stand-ins for our alchoholic fathers, shadowy replacements for our angry mothers, surrogates with whom we try to work out our unfinished childhood dramas. Or we fall in love with someone who incarnates the virtues or vices opposite our own. An orderly man who plans his days marries a spontaneous woman who lets things lie where they fall, lives in the moment, and is perpetually late for appointments. ~ Sam Keen

The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice. ~ G.K. Chesterton

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth - it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles. ~ Willem Dafoe

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? ~ Ayn Rand

In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference. ~ Dan Quayle

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever. ~ Jane Austen

Society punishes not the vices of its members, but their detection ... ~ Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I'm presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money. (64) ~ Mary Doria Russell

It would be superfluous to mention more who, though others deemed them the happiest of men, have expressed their loathing for every act of their years, and with their own lips have given true testimony against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither themselves nor others. For when they have vented their feelings in words, they fall back into their usual round. Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced. ~ Seneca.

Ignoring the vices of our friends and the virtues of our enemies sets us up for nasty surprises. ~ Philip E. Tetlock

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance. ~ Washington Irving

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

There is no truth to the rumors that we hate each other. I have no ill feeling for [Britney Spears] and vice versa. I am proud of all the achievements she has made in her career, she is a very hard-working person. I have nothing but love for her. ~ Christina Aguilera

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

Left to my own vices, all I would own is a Corvette, and it would be broken down. ~ Bill Engvall

The vices of some men are magnificent. ~ Charles Lamb

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices. ~ Andre Gide

I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue. ~ Katy Lederer

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. ~ Charles Dickens

As the most extravagant errors were received among the established articles of their faith, so the most infamous vices obtained in their practice, and were indulged not only with impunity, but authorized by the sanction of their laws. ~ David Brainerd

A dollar saved is a dollar earned but seldom vice versa. ~ Evan Esar

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

Sins become more subtle as you grow older: you commit sins of despair rather than of lust. ~ Piers Paul Read

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

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

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised. ~ Juvenal

Why is discipline important? Discipline teaches us to operate by principle rather than desire. Saying no to our impulses (even the ones that are not inherently sinful) puts us in control of our appetites rather than vice versa. It deposes our lust and permits truth, virtue, and integrity to rule our minds instead. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

Unless we suppress our conscience, we naturally know basic moral truths. General virtues and vices, Thomas Reid wrote, "must appear self-evident to every man who has a conscience, and has taken the pains to exercise this natural power of his mind" ("Of Morals"). ~ Anonymous

No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice. ~ Marcel Proust

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once. ~ Apollonius Of Tyana

I don't think that actors are necessarily any more uncomfortable in their skin than anyone else. I suppose I feel more comfortable in my skin now, but you're always playing a character, aren't you? You tell different versions of yourself to different people and vice versa. Here, or in the photo shoot or wherever, it's a representation of you. It's not you-you. That's how you get through it. ~ Ben Whishaw