Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
However evil men may be they dare not be openly hostile to virtue, and so when they want to attack it they pretend to find it spurious , or impute crimes to it.
Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.
What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.
If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.
To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences.
Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
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.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.
There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.
Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.
It requires greater virtues to support good fortune than bad.
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.
Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.
Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
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