vice

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.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

Virtue's his path; but sometimes 'tis too narrow For his vast soul; and then he starts out wide, And bounds into a vice.

—Dryden,John

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any mancanpursue; it needs anunceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit.It cannot, like adulteryor gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole- time job.

—Maugham,W(illiam) Somerset

   Excellentioris person× semper casus in vitium, minoris lapsum, comparatione scandali multe longius antecedit. The scandal of an exalted person's fall into vice, when compared to the lapse of one lesser, always far exceeds it.

—Canmore, Malcolm   d.1093

Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

—Goldwater, Barry M(orris)

La cruaute¤  , bien loin d'e"  tre un vice, est le premier sentiment qu'imprime en nous la nature; l'enfant brise son hochet, mord le te¤  ton de sa nourrice, e¤  trangle son oiseau, bien avant que d'avoir l'a"  ge de raison. Far from being a vice, cruelty is the primary feeling that nature imprints in us. The infant breaks its rattle, bites its nurse's nipple, and strangles a bird, well before reaching the age of reason.

—Sade, Donatien Alphonse Fran c° ois, Marquis de

   Alas, it doesindeed seema monstrousthing, but afterall, what is chaste in Constantinople may have the aspect of lewdness in Liverpool, and what in Liverpool may pass for virtueinConstantinopleisfrequently regardedasvice.

—Ford, Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer

Mr Kemblesacrificestoomuchto decorum.He ischiefly afraid of being contaminated by too close an identity with the character herepresents.This isthegreatest vice in an actor, who ought never to bilk his part.

—Hazlitt,William

The root of Evil, Avarice That damn'd ill-natur'd, baneful Vice, Was Slave to Prodigality, That noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employed a Million of the Poor, And odious Pride a Million more; Envy itself, and Vanity, Were Ministers of Industry; Their darling Folly, Fickleness, In Diet, Furniture and Dress That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made That very Wheel that turned theTrade.

—Mandeville, Bernard

Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout intotheregions of sinand falsity thanby reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

—Milton,John

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not being vice.

—Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford

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

—Hemingway, Ernest Millar

All the immediate checks to populationöseem to be resolvable into moral restraint, vice and misery.

—Malthus,Thomas Robert

Mutual forgiveness of each vice, Such are the Gates of Paradise.

—Blake,William

I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

—Jonson, Ben

What a pity it is we have no amusements in England but vice and religion!

—Smith, Rev Sydney

For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right,

—Spenser, Edmund

It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed.

—Sumner,William Graham

Grit riches and prosperitie Upfosteris vyce.

—Brown,Thomas

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

Punctuality is the vice of virtuous women.

—Patrick,John pseudonym of  John Patrick Goggan

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be classics, now it's lyric verse.

—Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn

Change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

   Then let Ausonia, skilled in every art To soften manners, but corrupt the heart, Pour her exotic follies o'er the town, To sanctionVice, and hunt Decorum down.

—Rochdale

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

So writing ismy sole remaining vice.It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable.

—Updike,John Hoyer

Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.

—Defoe, Daniel

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

—Pope, Alexander

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

—Burke, Edmund

The vice of meanness, condemned in every other country, is in Scotland translated into a virtue called 'thrift'.

—Thomson, David

Il n'ya qu'un seul vice dont on ne voie personne se vanter, c'est l'ingratitude. There is only one vice of which no one boastsöingratitude. 611

—Nerval, Ge¤  rard de pseudonym of  Ge¤  rard Labrunie

L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend a'   la vertu. Hypocrisy is a tribute which vice pays to virtue.

—La Rochefoucauld, Fran c° ois, 6th Duc de

That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.

—Milton,John

J'aime mieux un vice commode Qu'une fatigante vertu. I prefer easygoing vice to tiresome virtue.

—Molie'  re,Jean Baptiste Poquelin

My Darling, prickly hedgehog of the heart, chocolates, cherries, hairshirts, pinks and glassö when we joined in the sublime blindness of courtship loving lost all its vice with half its virtue.

—Lowell, RobertTraill Spence,Jr

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.

—Addison,Joseph

The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.

—Tennyson