A Quote by Quintilian

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

Quintilian

Quote Topics

Ambition Cause Itself Often Ten Times Though Times Vice Virtues

Quote Author

Quintilian
Roman - Educator
35 - 95

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

Quintilian

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [Lat., Licet ipsa vitium sit ambitio, frequenter tamen causa virtutem est.]

Quintilian

Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

Quintilian

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Hosea Ballou

Tolerance is a virtue, but, like all virtues, when exaggerated it transforms itself into a vice.

Boyd K. Packer

Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

Edmund Burke

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

Bob Dylan

Riches, though they may reward virtues, yet they cannot cause them; he is much more noble who deserves a benefit than he who bestows one.

Owen Feltham

For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

William Shakespeare

To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

Mary McCarthy

There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

Sydney J. Harris

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.

William Shakespeare