A Quote by Denis Diderot

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Denis Diderot

Quote Topics

Associates Catch Far Liable More Our Than Vices Virtues

Quote Author

Denis Diderot
French - Editor
October 5, 1713 - July 31, 1784

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

Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

Charles Caleb Colton

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.

Holbrook Jackson

To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.

Edward Gibbon

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.

R. H. Tawney

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education.

Noah Webster

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

Edward Dahlberg

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

Samuel Johnson

Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

Aristotle

The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices

Paul Valery

Pride is the king of vices...it is the first of the pallbearers of the soul...other vices destroy only their opposite virtues, as wantonness destroys chastity; greed destroys temperance; anger destroys gentleness; but pride destroys all virtues.