Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us even in our pains.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores.
—Moliere (1622–73) French Playwright
Every age and 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 Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
No man ever arrived suddenly at the summit of vice.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we to our passions, that we suffer more to insure perdition than salvation. Religion does not forbid the rational enjoyments of life as sternfy as avarice forbids them. She does not require such sacrifices of ease as ambition; or such renunciation of quiet as pride. She does not murder sleep like dissipation; or health like intemperance; or scatter wealth like extravagance or gambling. She does not embitter life like discord; or shorten it like duelling; or harrow it like revenge. She does not impose more vigilance than suspicion; mere anxiety than selfishness; or half as many mortifications as vanity!
—Hannah More
When Mandeville maintained that private vices were public benefits, he did not calculate the widely destructive influence of bad example. To affirm that a vicious man is only his own enemy is about as wise as to affirm that a virtuous man is only his own friend.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
This is the essential evil of vice, that it debases a man.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
Most vices demand considerable self-sacrifices. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a vicious life is a life of uninterrupted pleasure. It is a life almost as wearisome and painful—if strenuously led—as Christian’s in The Pilgrim’s Progress.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
But when to mischief mortals bend their will, how soon they find fit instruments of ill!
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Men often abstain from the grosser vices as too coarse and common for their appetites, while the vices that are frosted and ornamented are served up to them as delicacies.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends… with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners—your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards—who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest, manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
What’s vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Vice goes a long way tow’rd makin’ life bearable. A little vice now an’ thin is relished by th’ best iv men.
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) American Author, Writer, Humorist
A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
In actions of life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue.
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat