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Vice Quotes

Browse 108 quotes about Vice.

Vice Quotes

“My soul is callous, it is impassive... I put any sentiment whatever at defiance to attain it, with the exception of pleasure. I am mistress of that soul's movements and affections, of its desires, of its impulsions; with me, everything is under the unchallenged control of mind; and there's worse yet... for my mind is appalling. But I am not complaining, I cherish my vices, I abhor virtue; I am the sworn enemy of all religions, of all gods and godlings, I fear neither the ills of life nor what follows death; and when you're like me, you're happy.”

IndifferenceViceCallousness
Book:Juliette
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“The vision of life is not a "discovery"; it's a "work" and whatever position you occupy demands work. Your life may not be built on your visions if you go high and find yourself doing the vice. Going higher should be a priority; but being aware of the reason for getting there should be the focus!”

WorkLeaderVisionDreamsPositionHard WorkHigherDemandHighestDiscoveryIsraelmore AyivorFocusedLiveLeadersWork HardHighDiscoverAspirationsAwarePriorityViceOppositeDemandsPriorLife VisionGo HighFood For Though
Book:The Great Hand Book of Quotes
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“Father Brendan Flynn: "A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes,' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast,' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!”

PeopleLifeInspirationalWisdomTruthReligionDifferencesDoubtPsychologyHuman NatureMoralityGayRespectToleranceMoviePrivacyLgbtGossipWrongIntoleranceRightHomosexualPersecutionSlanderViceProverbial WisdomSermonVirtues And VicesTolerance RespectSocial DiseaseHuman DifferencesFather FlynnPhilip Seymour Hoffmann
Book:Doubt, a Parable
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“The stranger was still smiling. He transformed himself into a rose bush and entwined me. My Christian education meant that ever since childhood I have had a horror of vice and it was not without a quite understandable terror that I discerned the pleasure I felt in the embrace of this vigorous bush whose branches gradually mingled with my limbs, my hair and my looks. When one of its flowers came apart in my mouth, I could feel myself grasping the sorcerer in my arms in my turn. He was transformed into a torrent, and I was a barge, into desert and I was smoke, into a car and I was a road, into a man and I was a woman. 'What we are doing is very wrong,' he said and was off.”

PleasureMagicTerrorViceSorcererPossesssion
Author:Robert Desnos
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“Between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football gamme--or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers. But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact that a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). [...] The most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone--that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. It was said or at least implied yesterday that my present course would bring me to the depths of human vice and degeneration. Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me. It is true, if I were to go on like this and be spied upon, attacked, never possessing one person long enough so that knowledge of a person is a superficial thing--that is degeneration. Or to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition.”

PleasureAttitudeViceRapportDementedDegenerationPhilosophers
Book:The Price of Salt
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“If she knew me as I really am she would despise me, and certainly not aid or abet my evil designs. To veil their vices from the sight of the good is the only resource of those who are not blind and know themselves to be vicious.' Thus was I confirmed in habits of hypocrisy; and these, for a time, worked only too effectually to my advantage.”

EvilHonestyGoodHypocrisyDespiseDisguiseViciousViceDissimulate
Book:The Episodes of Vathek
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“I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began. "And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all." "I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly. "Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.”

SoulPhilosophyValuesEvilPeaceLearningVirtuePrideKillingInjusticeProsperityCorruptionGoodDoctrinePublic OfficeVice
Book:The Dream of Scipio
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“The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also...Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere. Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.”

WealthMoneyVirtuePrideVanityTranscendentalismVice
Book:The Conduct of Life
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“My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (...) Response [by Lady Rectitude]: "Fair sweet friend, have you not yet heard the saying that the fool sees well enough a small cut in the face of his neighbour, but he disregards the great gaping one above his own eye? I will show you the great contradiction in what the men say about the changeability and inconstancy of women. It is true that they all generally insist that women are very frail [= fickle] by nature. And since they accuse women of frailty, one would suppose that they themselves take care to maintain a reputation for constancy, or at the very least, that the women are indeed less so than they are themselves. And yet, it is obvious that they demand of women greater constancy than they themselves have, for they who claim to be of this strong and noble condition cannot refrain from a whole number of very great defects and sins, and not out of ignorance, either, but out of pure malice, knowing well how badly they are misbehaving. But all this they excuse in themselves and say that it is in the nature of man to sin, yet if it so happens that any women stray into any misdeed (of which they themselves are the cause by their great power and longhandedness), then it's suddenly all frailty and inconstancy, they claim. But it seems to me that since they do call women frail, they should not support that frailty, and not ascribe to them as a great crime what in themselves they merely consider a little defect.”

MenWomenSinVirtueFeminismMoralityEmpowermentPrejudiceGenderInequalityHypocrisyMisogynySlanderStereotypesStrength Of CharacterFrailtyConstancySocial NormsPreconceptionsFirmnessDouble StandardsViceClichés
Book:The Book of the City of Ladies
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“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”

EvilSinShameVicesAshamedShamefulBarbariansSad But TrueSinsEvil PeopleViceImpurityEvil ThoughtsEvil MenRomansEvilsShame Of SocietyDual MeaningImpuritiesStill True Today
Book:Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic
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“We priests are sneered at and always shall be—the accusation is such an easy one—as deeply envious, hypocritical haters of virility. Yet whosoever has experienced sin must know that lust, with its parasitic growth, is for ever threatening to stifle virility as well as intelligence. Impotent to create, it can only contaminate in the germ the frail promise of humanity; it is probably at the very source, the primal cause of all human blemishes; and when amid the windings of this huge jungle whose paths are unknown, we encounter Lust, just as she is, as she emerged forth from the hands of the Master of Prodigies, the cry from our hearts is not only terror but imprecation: 'You, you alone have set death loose upon the world!”

DeathEvilSinLustVice
Book:The Diary of a Country Priest
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“Samuel understood at last why this being hated men and women so much: he hated them because they were so like himself, because the worst of the was mirrored in them. He was the source of all that was bad in men and women, but he had none of the greatness, and none of the grace, of which human beings were capable, so that by only by corrupting them was his own pain diminished, and thus his existence made more tolerable.”

PainEvilDarkHellVirtueGraceGreatnessDevilHatredMiseryCorruptionGoodGood And EvilBadViceThe DevilThe Great Malevolence
Book:The Infernals
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“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.”

SoulPoliticsChangeSinProgressSocietyMankindVicesCorruptionHumbleSelfishFinanceManSelfishnessTriumphHypocrisyMediocrityCynicalCynicismMediocreRottenUtopiaCorruptCrookedUtopianSinsViceVileUnscrupulousPillagePlacidityPerfectibilityPerfectible
Book:Là-bas
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“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? [...] In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world. We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

LoveHumanityVirtueHuman NatureVice
Book:East of Eden
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“But even a vessel pulsates, beats and pumps in ecstasy and in rage! I wonder are the way we are because we are trying to protect ourselves from the “monsters” not realizing this fear that we are harboring inside us is turning us into goblins and ghouls ourselves? Not even a heart caged inside of ribs can be protected. Who can really be to blame for your broken heart? In-turn we find our own vices , our own ways to cope, ways that we petrify our bodies our lives in such a fashion so we can stop and notice the stars sparkling in the sky everything and everyone that embodies love YOUR LOVE… and every spec dancing in our own light, specs we failed to see because of our own faults.”

LoveInspirationalSelfPhilosophyInspirationMotivationalHappinessInspirational QuotesPoetryMotivationHopeImpossibleDreamsStrengthHuman NatureSelf EsteemSelf HelpInspirational LifeBrokenSelf LoveSelf ImprovementVicesGoalsWriterBroken HeartLove YourselfPossibilitiesKingQueenInspiring ThoughtsBroken HeartedBuffaloViceVibesLove Yourself FirstReason To LiveWon TVibeAnything Can BeShouldn T716Musn T
Author:QuietStormPoet
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“When you hear men talking," said Cornelia, "all they ever do is speak ill of women. ... And I don't quite know how they managed to make this law in their favour, or who exactly it was who gave them a greater license to sin than is allowed to us; and if the fault is common to both sexes (as they can hardly deny), why should the blame not be as well? What makes them think they can boast of the same thing that in women brings only shame?”

SinFeminismMoralityMen And WomenEmpowermentGenderInequalityHypocrisyMisogynyStereotypesSocial NormsPreconceptionsDouble StandardsViceSelf PerceptionClichés
Book:The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men
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“My contention is that the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality is but a thinly disguised replica of the religious perspective which it displaced, and that efforts to 'treat' this kind of conduct medically are but thinly disguised methods for suppressing it.”

SinHomosexualityPsychiatryViceMedicalization
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“Now what?' asked Mr Neville, taking her arm. 'Oh, nothing,' said Edith. 'I was simply thinking how little vice there is around these days. One is led to believe one can pick and choose, but in fact, there seems no choice at all.' 'Stroll round the deck with me,' said Mr Neville. 'You are shivering. That cardigan is not warm enough; I do wish you would get rid of it. ... As to vice, there is plenty to be found if you know where to look.' 'I never seem to find it,' said Edith. 'That is because you do not give yourself over wholeheartedly to the pursuit. But, if you remember, we are going to change all that.' 'I really don't see how. If all it involves is giving away my cardigan, I feel I should tell you I have another one at home.”

SinVirtueMoralsVice
Book:Hotel du Lac
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“...[I]f at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment; and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy - if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated?”

SinAddictionViceGodlessnessFaithlessness
Book:Apology, Crito And Phaedo Of Socrates.
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“But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of mankind.”

SinVirtueDeceptionViceAllurement
Book:Hide and Seek
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“Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head. Men may come to that, that sin may not be heard speaking a scandalous word in their hearts - that is, provoking to any great sin with scandal in its mouth; but yet every rise of lust, might it have its course, would come to the height of villainy: it is like the grave that is never satisfied.”

SinTemptationVice
Book:The Mortification of Sin
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“I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation.”

SinTemptationSelf RighteousnessVice
Book:Coelebs in Search of a Wife
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“When I was a young man and very well thought of, I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied. I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins, And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know The secret I shelter and savor and save I wait for the one who will see through my seeming, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.' The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens; The ladies went by me like snow on the wind. I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled, And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned. But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave. My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful, And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.' At last came a lady both knowing and tender, Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.' I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking, And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea. And I say to myself when there's time for a word, As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved, 'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”

SinHabitLamentViceDebaucheryDestructiveness
Book:The Last Unicorn
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“To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long.”

LoveLifeReasonMotherPurposeFatherFriendshipWealthFamilyMarriageWifeRelationshipBloodAdviceTrustSonBrotherHonorHusbandLivingDaughterResourcesDignityLoyaltyParentsMeaningMeaning Of LifeGrandmotherPurpose Of LifeGrandfatherSpouseCousinNobilityAuntFaithfulnessRoyaltyFellowshipLong LifeSisterMatrimonyDescendantsAncestorsLiving WellDynastyViceRelativesGrandparentsBloodlinesUncleBlood Is Thicker Than WaterHoly Matrimony
Book:Healology
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