39 Vice Quotes

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.

Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself.

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!'

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

Most Men are Cowards, all Men should be Knaves. The Difference lies, as far as I can see, Not in the thing it self, but the Degree.

But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Helas! les vices de l'homme, si pleins d'horreur qu'on les suppose, contiennent la preuve (quand ce ne serait que leur infinie expansion!) de son gout de l'infini.

On n'est jamais excusable d'etre mechant, mais il y a quelque merite a savoir qu'on l'est; et le plus irreparable des vices est de faire le mal par betise.

Yet malice never was his aim; He lashed the vice but spared the name. No individual could resent, Where thousands equally were meant. His satire points at no defect But what all mortals may correct; For he abhorred that senseless tribe Who call it humor when they gibe.

Nos defauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires que nous opposions a nos vices.

Pleasure of itself is not a vice.

When we reflect upon the brutal vices of these salt-water bandits, pirates as shameful as any whom the sea has borne, or recoil from their villainous destruction and cruel deeds, we must also remember the discipline, the fortitude, the comradeship and martial virtues which made them at this period beyond all challenge the most formidable and daring race in the world.

Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame, False to my passion, fatal to my fame, Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?

Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one - the solitary one - that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices - the most hateful...He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain...Also - in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.

Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.

Bacchus, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Ce qui nous empeche souvent de nous abandonner a un seul vice est que nous en avons plusieurs.

L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend a la vertu.

The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.

I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamaties which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

What must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust!

Can you support the expense of a husband, hussy, in gaming, drinking and whoring? Have you money enough to carry on the daily quarrels of man and wife about who shall squander most? There are not many husbands and wives, who can bear the charges of plaguing one another in a handsome way.

'Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet- the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.