vice quotes

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.