Vices Quotes

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Cigarettes and coffee: an alcoholic's best friend!”
― Gerard Way

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
― Augustine of Hippo, City of God

“The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“If you didn't do anything that wasn't good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous. Have you noticed that? I'd like to find the bastard that thought that one up.”
― Lemmy Kilmister

“I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.”
― Huysmans Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas

“He parked his car carefully, made sure he'd set all the locks and the alarm. On the steps he kept looking behind him, snapping glances into shadows like he expected this to be a set-up with my gang waiting to roll him. Nervous. But I got this feeling the possibility of danger was all part of it for him. What he wanted was something with an edge to it, something stamped as unmistakable bad.

Welcome to the club, dude.”
― Matthew Stokoe, High Life

“...no man can cause more grief than the one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancesters.”
― William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

“Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.”
― Charles Caleb Colton

“It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.”
― Walter Bagehot

“To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Culture, like science, is no protection against demons.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live...

Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us...

The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty...but are admirable in chastity...what hope can there be [for the Romans] when the barbarians are more pure [than they]?"

-Salvian”
― William J Federer, Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic

“Mr Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. at least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. The others were just job skills.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Every bit of evidence would suggest that the will to be moving is as old as mankind. Take the people in the Old Testament. They were always on the move. First, it's Adam and Eve moving out of Eden. Then it's Cain condemned to be a restless wanderer, Noah drifting on the waters of the Flood, and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Some of these figures were out of the Lord's favor and some of them were in it, but all of them were on the move. And as far as the New Testament goes, Our Lord Jesus Christ was what they call a peripatetic--someone who's always going from place to place--whether on foot, on the back of a donkey, or on the wings of angels.

But the proof of the will to move is hardly limited to the pages of the Good Book. Any child of ten can tell you that getting-up-and-going is topic number one in the record of man's endeavors. Take that big red book that Billy is always lugging around. It's got twenty-six stories in it that have come down through the ages and almost every one of them is about some man going somewhere. Napoleon heading off on one of his conquests, or King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail. Some of the men in the book are figures from history and some from fancy, but whether real or imagined, almost every one of them is on his way to someplace different from where he started.

So, if the will to move is as old as mankind and every child can tell you so, what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked in the hallway of his mind that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put?

It isn't due to a loss of vigor. For the transformation doesn't come when men like my father are growing old and infirm. It comes when they are hale, hearty, and at the peak of their vitality. If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, and make an honest living. They'll speak with pride of their ties to the community through the church and the Rotary and the chamber of commerce, and all other manner of stay-puttery.

But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man's virtues but from his vices. After all, aren't gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying put? Don't they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you've built up around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man's home may be his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings.”
― Seneca, Letters From A Stoic | Moral Letters To Lucilius

“It is time to stop, but not before I have paid duty. "The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation." This saying of Epicurus seems to me to be a noble one. For he who does not know that he has sinned does not desire correction; you must discover yourself in the wrong before you can reform yourself. Some boasts of their faults. Do you think that the man has any thought of mending his ways who counts over his vices as if they were virtues? Therefore, as far as possible, prove yourself guilty, hunt up charges against yourself; play the part, first of accuser, then of judge, last of intercessor. At times be harsh with yourself.”
― Seneca, Letters From A Stoic | Moral Letters To Lucilius

“I find that our
greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender
infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse.
Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a
chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise
fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a
martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a
poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a
great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow
by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and
roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and
afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated
by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile
inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the
subject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more
sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and
young.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Chaudhury was further struck by the fact that each politician came to be identified by his or her main or only vice, which shrouded all the virtues.
In the political field, frailty was the banner held aloft over each person's chariot, announcing only vulnerable points to the wide world.”
― P.V. Narasimha Rao, The insider

“You're worried I'll go back to whorin again, I reckon," she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. "Can't say for certain I won't. But it I do, Nate, then you won't have to have nothin' more to do with me, an' that'll be that." She set her hand on his arm. "I don't want it to end that way, I swear I don't."

"I don't, either. It's just-oh, hell." Caudell kicked the dirt again. Foolish to take chances, he thought-would you use a one time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel?”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Ma poi si finisce per avere nostalgia anche delle abitudini peggiori. Sono quelle che si rimpiangono di più, perchè formano una parte essenziale della propria personalità”
― O. Wilde

“Some may go so far as to label these pleasures vices, but I would not, for what is a vice after all, but a pleasure with a bad reputation?”
― Odale Cress, Cuisine is a Dialect, A Leisurely Stroll Through the Edible History of Provincetown

“Small pleasures and little vices combine to make life happy.”
― B.S. Murthy, Crossing the Mirage - Passing through Youth

“Maybe that’s how it is. Some people drink, gamble, or work longer hours. Others get abortions or fuck committed people. When we’re fed up making the same mistakes, maybe we change for the better.

Become less fucked up.

Happier.”
― John Pucay, Karinderya Love Songs

“I exchanged a love that would set me apart, heal me, and free me from dependence, for a pimp that kept me like a slave, locked in a hotel room, unable to escape. I traded freedom for vices. I traded fulfilling love for inanimate objects and idolatrous relationships that controlled and exploited me. But the whole time, He was waiting there, waiting for His prostitute beloved, ready to break me free.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Cardinal flaws: Treachery, Inequity, Cruelty, Selfishness, Hypocrisy.”
― Danilo Vukovljak

“What we condemn as vices in animals, we glorify as virtues in humans—deceit disguised as strategy, selfishness wrapped in success, ruthlessness painted as leadership, dominance disguised as control.”
― Renuka Goria