Sayings about Vices
Vices creep into our hearts under the name of virtue. ~ Latin Proverb
Work relieves us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and want. ~ French Proverb
After one vice a greater follows. ~ Spanish Proverbs
Idleness is the beginning of all vices. ~ Traditional Proverb
Sloth is the beginning of vice. ~ Dutch Proverbs
Vice often rides triumphantly in the coach of virtue. ~ German Proverbs
Vice is nourished by concealment. ~ Latin Proverbs
Where vice is vengeance follows. ~ Scottish Proverbs
Vice hides under a cloak of virtue. ~ French Proverb
Ingratitude is the mother of every vice. ~ French Proverb
Vice is often clothed in virtue’s habit. ~ Traditional Proverb
Great abilities produce great vices as well as virtues. ~ Greek Proverbs
Vices are learned without a master. ~ Italian Proverbs
Virtue: climbing a hill; vice: running down. ~ Chinese Proverb
Practice no vice because it’s trivial; neglect no virtue because it’s so. ~ Chinese Proverb
Quotations about Vices
Vices are of two kinds, the beastly and the devilish. By his beastly vices, man puts himself below the beasts; the devilish vices have a degree of wickedness that goes far beyond the human. ~ Immanuel Kant
Human nature is not of itself vicious. ~ Thomas Paine
How often the priest had heard the same confession–Man was so limited: he hadn’t even the ingenuity to invent a new vice. ~ Graham Greene
Vices are often habits rather than passions. ~ Antoine de Rivarol
We try to make a virtue of vices we are loth to correct. ~ Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
We tolerate without rebuke the vices with which we have grown familiar. ~ Publilius Syrus
Vice gets more in this vicious world than piety. ~ John William Fletcher
Vice stirs up war, virtue fights. ~ Marquis De Vauvenargues
And poor misfortune feels the lash of vice. ~ James Thomson
What’s vice today may be virtue, tomorrow. ~ Henry Fielding
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. ~ Francis Bacon
What maintains one vice would bring up two children. ~ Benjamin Franklin
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
Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today. ~ Aristophanes
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. ~ Walter Bagehot
Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
No man e’er reached the heights of vice at first. ~ Juvenal
If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner. ~ Francis Bacon
If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues? ~ John Churton Collins
What is a vice—any vice—but the overwhelming of reason and conscience by an anarchy of passion? ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance. ~ Jean de La Bruyère
Vice in its own pure native ugliness. ~ George Crabbe
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! ~ Charles Dickens Quotes
Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times. ~ Seneca
Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues. ~ Abraham Lincoln Quotes
Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression. ~ Owen Felltham
I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame. ~ Thomas Gray
He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice. ~ Wellins Calcott
Virtue makes us appear amiable to others; vice, contemptible even to ourselves. ~ Norman MacDonald
The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. ~ William Hazlitt
This is the danger, when vice becomes a precedent. ~ Ben Jonson
What were once vices are the fashion of the day. ~ Marcus Annaeus
Vice is but a nurse of agonies. ~ Sir Philip Sidney
Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practice laborious virtues. ~ Samuel Johnson
One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones. ~ Bret Harte
Vices that are familiar we pardon, and only new ones reprehend. ~ Syrus (Publilius Syrus)
I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices. ~ Mark Twain Quotes
Let thy vices die before thee. ~ Benjamin Franklin
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
The vices of some men are magnificent. ~ Charles Lamb
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. ~ Samuel Butler
Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Vice repeated is like the wandering wind, blows dust in others’ eyes to spread itself. ~ William Shakespeare
Vice is perhaps a desire to learn everything. ~ Honore de Balzac
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates. ~ Denis Diderot
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds. ~ Samuel Butler
Many a man’s vices have at first been nothing worse than good qualities run wild. ~ A.W. Hare and J.C. Hare
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 George Earle Lytton
Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together. ~ Seneca
The vices operate like age,–bring on disease before its time, and in the prime of youth, leave the character broken and exhausted. ~ Junius
Vice stings us, even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us, even in our pains. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
When fortune smiles on you, neighbors will imitate both your vices and your virtues. ~ James Lendall Basford
No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least. ~ Horace
Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents. ~ George Savile
I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores. ~ Moliere
Vices are seldom single. ~ Robert Hall
Think no vice so small that you may commit it, and no virtue so small that you may over look it. ~ Confucius
Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams. ~ Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Vice can deceive under the guise and shadow of virtue. ~ Juvenal
He who hates vice hates men. ~ John Morley
We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot. ~ Saint Aurelius Augustine
Vice turns beauty into deformity. ~ Samuel Richardson
The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves. ~ Jean de la Bruyere
Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. ~ Edmund Burke
A vice is a failure of desire. ~ Gerald Stanley Lee
The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice. ~ Horace
Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes
Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
Every vice has its excuse ready. ~ Publilius Syrus
When the vices give us up we flatter ourselves that we are giving up them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. ~ Oliver Goldsmith
One vice worn out makes us wiser than fifty tutors. ~ Edward George Earle Lytton
Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. ~ Winston Churchill Quotes
A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues. ~ Plutarch
Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful. ~ Benjamin Franklin
The reason that men are so slow to confess their vices is because they have not yet abandoned them. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
He hasn’t a single redeeming vice. ~ Oscar Wilde Quotes
The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others. ~ Herbert Samuel
Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere. ~ William Hazlitt
Vices are their own punishment. ~ Aesop
We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this. ~ Holbrook Jackson
I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue. ~ Katy Lederer
The only vice some men have is their claim to being virtuous. ~ Evan Esar
The vicious obey their passions, as slaves do their masters. ~ Laertius Diogenes
Vices of the time; vices of the man. ~ Francis Bacon
Every deed of dishonor, every victim of vice, every ghastly spectacle of crime, is an eloquent testimony to the need and the worth of virtue. ~ E. H. Chapin
What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one. ~ François VI de la Rochefoucault
So in the wicked there’s no vice of which the saints have not a spice. ~ Samuel Butler