A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

Henry David Thoreau

Quote Topics

Always Best Direction Estate Latter Lie Our Plausible Vices Virtues

Quote Author

Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

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 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

Our virtues live upon our incomes; our vices consume our capital.

Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls.

Victor Hugo

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

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Thomas Paine

Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem.

William Dunbar

If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues?

John Churton Collins

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

Holbrook Jackson

When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance.

Luc de Clapiers

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

Moliere

As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.