Vices Quotes - Page 9

• Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud--and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Two, Feelings, Forgiving

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• It is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door be able to say: "No room for your ladyship; pass on.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Doors, Brain, Able

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• One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Fifty, Worn, Wiser

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• The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  World, Language, Virtue

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• Be not under the dominion of thine own will; it is the vice of the ignorant, who vainly presume on their own understanding.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Understanding, Ignorant, Dominion

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1851). “The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.321

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• Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.

  Josh Billings

  Jobs, Passion, Vanity

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• For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Years, People, Quality

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• To me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness.

  Thomas Browne

  Pieces, Madness, Seems

  Sir Thomas Browne, Claire Preston (1995). “Selected Writings”, p.30, Psychology Press

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• The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Attitude, Hate, Dirty

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Men, Knack

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• Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Men, Color

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• Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Grief, Soul, Sorrow

  Michel de Montaigne (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.398

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• A vice in common can be the ground of a friendship but not a virtue in common. X and Y may be friends because they are both drunkards or womanizers but, if they are both sober and chaste, they are friends for some other reason.

  W. H. Auden

  May, Common, Sober

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Don Juan"), (p. 403), 1962.

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• 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

  Money, Secret, Tongue

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• In some way the secret vice exhales its poison; and the evil passion, however cunningly masked, stains through to the surface.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Passion, Evil, Secret

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• The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Heart, Passionate, Poet

  'Maud' (1855) pt. 1, sect. 4, st. 7

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• It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Men, Sensible

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• Is it against justice or reason to love ourselves? And why is self-love always a vice?

  Luc de Clapiers

  Self, Justice, Reason

  "Reflections and Maxims". Book by Luc de Clapiers, 1746.

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• When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Sick, Virtue

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• If it is true that vice can never be done away with, the science of government consists of making it contribute to the public good.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Government, Done, Ifs

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• History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teachh us vice.

  Ludwig Borne

  Funny, Sarcasm, Virtue

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• Vices that are familiar we pardon, and only new ones reprehend.

  Publilius Syrus

  Pardon, Familiar

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• Our virtues live upon our incomes; our vices consume our capital.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Income, Virtue

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• Children will imitate their fathers in their vices, seldom in their repentance.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Children, Father, Example

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1857). “Sermons: 1st series [-6th series].”, p.317

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• The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other.

  Tennessee Celeste Claflin

  Sex, War, Men

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