A Quote by Ira Gershwin
Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.
Related Quotes
That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
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.
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.
It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.
I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age - which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.
One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame.
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.
In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.
MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.
Virtue and vice are not arbitrary things; but there is a natural and eternal reason for goodness and virtue, and against vice and wickedness.
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.
Age whitens hairs, but not sin.
The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years, he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent.
He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician