A Quote by Philip Massinger

Virtue, thou in rags, may challenge more than vice set off with all the trim of greatness.

Philip Massinger

Quote Topics

Challenge Greatness May More Off Rags Set Than Thou Trim Vice Virtue

Quote Author

Philip Massinger
English - Dramatist
May 2, 1908 - June 27, 1908

But jest apart--what virtue canst thou trace In that broad trim that hides thy sober face? Does that long-skirted drab, that over-nice And formal clothing, prove a scorn of vice? Then for thine accent--what in sound can be So void of grace as dull monotony?

George Crabbe

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.

Thomas Paine

If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things comfortably thereto, thou wilt have no cause to envy lords and princes; for blood is inherited, but virtue is common property, and may be acquired by all; it has, moreover, an intrinsic worth, which blood has not.

Miguel de Cervantes

Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone.

William Gilmore Simms

The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.

Oliver Goldsmith

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Charles Caleb Colton

I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

Ben Jonson

Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.

John Tillotson

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

Kevin Brockmeier

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

Robert Smith Surtees

Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace.

Francis Quarles

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.