Vices Quotes - Page 33

• The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Funny, Humor, Law

  Oliver Goldsmith (1794). “The Citizen of the World Or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friend in the East”, p.33

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

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Flattery, Handmaids

  De Amicitia, XXIV,

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• Flattery was formerly a vice; it has now become the fashion.

  Publilius Syrus

  Fashion, Flattery

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 276-77, Maxims, 1922.

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Wish, Mischief

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.203

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• Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Honor, Bears

  'Cato' (1713) act 4, sc. 1, l. 319

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• Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

  Harriet Martineau

  Law, Creative, May

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.168

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• Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there.

  Eliphas Levi

  Weakness, Poison, Delight

  Eliphas Levi (1968). “Transcendental Magic”, p.353, Weiser Books

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

  Ambrose Bierce

  Self, Independence, Term

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.84, Courier Corporation

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• I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Feelings, Way, Causes

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• Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.

  Marquis de Sade

  Strong, Evil, Perfect

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• We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice.

  Maxwell Maltz

  Self Esteem, Opinion, Virtue

  Maxwell Maltz (2016). “Psycho-Cybernetics Deluxe Edition: The Original Text of the Classic Guide to a New Life”, p.86, Penguin

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• 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

  Passion, Men, Indulge In

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.283

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• In the 1920s the young English physicist Paul Dirac began trying to understand and describe the space-time evolution of the electron, the first elementary particle discovered by J.J. Thomson in 1897. Dirac was puzzled by an unprecedented property of space-time, discovered by Lorentz in his studies of electromagnetic forces, whereby if space was real, time had to be imaginary, and vice versa. In other words, space and time had to be a ‘complex’ mixture of two quantities, one real and the other imaginary.

  Antonino Zichichi

  Real, Two, Space

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• It is alarming ... to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience.

  Winston Churchill

  Temples, Naked, East

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.230, Hachette UK

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• What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Prison, Crime, Multitudes

  Benjamin Disraeli, Edmund Gosse, Robert Arnot (1904). “The works of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield: embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches”

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• Vices are not crimes.

  Lysander Spooner

  Prison, Crime

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• They've got a Jobs Council that never meets. A Democratic Senate that doesn't act. A President who doesn't believe and a Vice President who won't stop talking. They just don't get it.

  Thomas G. Stemberg

  Jobs, Believe, Talking

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• Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law.

  John Calvin

  Men, Law, Numbers

  John Calvin (2012). “The Institutes Of The Christian Religion (Annotated Edition)”, p.27, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Hulga the whole while hollering like a half-slaughtered hog. (Attention, students of literature! Alliteration - have you noticed? - is my least vice.)

  Truman Capote

  Attention, Half, Literature

  Truman Capote (2012). “Answered Prayes”, p.7, Vintage

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• The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Silly, Math, Doubt

  Eric Temple Bell (1937). “Men of Mathematics”

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• I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Virtue

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1414, Delphi Classics

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• By 1980, when I came out of prison, The Sun did a campaign to stop putting vice girls in prison. We've talked about it ever since and nothing has been done about it.

  Cynthia Payne

  Girl, Campaigns, Done

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• Contraceptive methods are like putting a premium on vice. It makes men and women reckless... As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception] , no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Lust, May

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• Vice President Joe Biden said today that 'Syria must be held accountable.' Unfortunately, the Obama administration has never employed an accountant, so they have no idea how to do that.

  Jay Leno

  Ideas, President, Biden

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• Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the “tolerance trap” so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God’s law of chastity.

  Boyd K. Packer

  Spiritual, Law, Land

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