A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Quote Topics

Better Disguised Often Our Reality Than Vices Virtues

Quote Author

Francois de La Rochefoucauld
French - Writer
September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Juvenal

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

Our virtues, as well as our vices, are often scourges for our own backs.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.

George Eliot

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

Denis Diderot

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

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

Holbrook Jackson

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

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

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

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.