A Quote by Samuel Butler
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Related Quotes
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
...the greatest political problem facing the world today is...how to curb the oppressive power of government, how to keep it within reasonable bounds.
To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.
To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.
Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.
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.
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.
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.
The primary conception of tennis is to get the ball over the net and at the same time to keep it within bounds of the court; failing this, within the borders of the neighborhood.
The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.
Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.
Keep to the middle if you wish to keep moderation. The mid way is the safe way. Moderation abides in the mean, and moderation is virtue. Every abiding place outside the bounds of moderation is only exile to the wise man.
Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.
Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
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