Vices Quotes - Page 8

• None seem to bear the imputation of supposed guilt with greater intolerance than such as are, on other occasions, obviously culpable of vice or crime.

  Norm MacDonald

  Guilt, Bears, Crime

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• If a man's innate self-respect will not save him from habitual, disgusting intoxication, all the female influences in the universe would not avail. Man's will, like woman's, is stronger than the affection, and, once subjugated by vice, all eternal influences will be futile.

  Augusta Jane Evans

  Men, Self, Stronger

  Augusta Jane Evans (1860). “Beulah”, p.272

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• The higher mental activities are pretty tough and resilient, but it is a devastating experience if the drive does stop. Some people lose it in their forties and can only stop. In England they are a source of Vice-Chancellors.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  People, Doe, England

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.196, Cambridge University Press

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• Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader.

  H. L. Mencken

  Wine, Character, Men

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• It costs more to maintain ten vices than one virtue.

  H. L. Mencken

  Cost, Virtue, Ten

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• If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be.

  Henry Adams

  Self, Long, Office

  Henry Adams (2015). “Democracy”, p.82, Sheba Blake Publishing

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

  Brendan Behan

  Men, Role Models, Inspire

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• The drama is the looking-glass in which we see the hideousness of vice and the beauties of virtue.

  Fanny Kemble

  Drama, Glasses, Virtue

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• 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

  Fashion, Age, Generations

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• A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Evil, Despair

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• It were better for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness; for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness.

  Walter Raleigh

  Men, Vanity, Delight

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• Flatterers are the worst kind of traitors, for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint thy follies and vices as thou shalt never, by their will, discover good from evil, or vice from virtue.

  Walter Raleigh

  Evil, Imperfection, Shadow

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• According to Solomon, life and death are in the power of the tongue; and as Euripides truly affirmeth, every unbridled tongue in the end shall find itself unfortunate; for in all that ever I observed in the course of worldly things, I ever found that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues, and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby, also, than by their vices.

  Walter Raleigh

  Men, Life And Death, Speech

  Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Birch, William Oldys (1829). “Miscellaneous works”, p.564

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• It is observed in the course of worldly things, that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues; and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby than by vices.

  Walter Raleigh

  Men, Tongue, Virtue

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• When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Hate, Men, Omission

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• Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Self, Virtue, Ill

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• It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Journey, Doubt, May

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• The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Medicine, Poison, Use

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• What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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• A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.

  James Mackintosh

  Self, Harbors, Variance

  Sir James Mackintosh (1834). “A general view of the progress of ethical philosophy: chiefly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”, p.117

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• Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Degrees, May, Enough

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.381, Oxford Paperbacks

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• The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God's vice-regents here on earth is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Leadership, Reflection, Knowing

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• Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Running, Drinking, Loss

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• A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the pox content which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Drinking, Wine, Character

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• Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Character, Hands, Greed

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.418, OUP Oxford

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