Vices

Famous quotes containing the word vices:

    The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    There is probably not one person, however great his virtue, who cannot be led by the complexities of life’s circumstances to a familiarity with the vices he condemns the most vehemently—without his completely recognizing this vice which, disguised as certain events, touches him and wounds him: strange words, an inexplicable attitude, on a given night, of the person whom he otherwise has so many reasons to love.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    As with a moral view designed
    To cure the vices of mankind;
    His vein, ironically grave,
    Exposed the fool, and lashed the knave;
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)