life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. 5621 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 52. VICE - see Ambition, Charity, Hypocrisy, Influence, Selfishness, Virtue. If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner. 5622 Bacon: Moral and Historical Works. Ornamenta Rationalia. The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success. 5623 Bulwer-Lytton: Money. Act v. Sc. 3. Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France. 5624 Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression. 5625 Owen Felltham: Resolves. Pt. ii. Of the Danger of Liberty. There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. 5626 Goldsmith: The Good-Natured Man. Act i. One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame. 5627 Thomas Gray: The Alliance of Education and Government. (Edmund Gosse, Editor.) Many a man's vices have at first been nothing worse than good qualities run wild. 5628 J. C. and A. W. Hare: Guesses at Truth. Beware of the beginnings of vice. with the belief that it can be argued of the exciting cause. Nothing but you. 5629 Do not delude yourself against in the presence actual flight can save B. R. Haydon : Table Talk. People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself. 5630 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 260. There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy: and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it. 5631 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 274. Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 144. Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere. 5632 The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves. 5633 La Bruyère: Characters. Of Judgments. (Rowe, There is no truth which personal vice will not distort. We have met the enemy, and they are ours. 5635 Oliver H. Perry: Letter to General Harrison, dated, "United States Brig Niagara. Off the Western Sisters. Sept. 10, 1813. 4 P.M." A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. 5636 Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing. I came, saw, and overcame. Act i. Sc. 1. 5637 Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Pt. ii. Act iv. Sc. 3. VILLANY - - see Cowardice, Fools, Hypocrisy. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. 5638 Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice. Act iii. Sc. 1. VIRTUE - see Ambition, Error, Fame, Forbearance, Goodness, Influence, Love, Nobility, Patience, Praise, Prudence, Reputation, Secrecy, Self-respect, Silence, Soul, Tenderness, Vanity, Vice. It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them. 5639 Addison: The Spectator. No. 494. A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others' evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope to attain to another's virtue will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune. 5640 Bacon: Essays. Of Envy. Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. Bacon Essays. Of Beauty. Virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed. 5642 Bacon Essays. Of Adversity. Virtue is not a negative quality. 5643 Henry Ward Beecher: Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. Virtue is uniform, conformable to reason, and of unvarying consistency; nothing can be added to it that can make it more than virtue; nothing can be taken from it, and the name of virtue be left. 5644 Cicero: Offices and Moral Works. Paradoxes. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact. 5645 Burke: Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the Virtue is, like health, the harmony of the whole man. If thou takest virtue for the rule of life, and valuest thyself upon acting in all things conformably 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. 5647 Cervantes: Don Quixote. Pt. ii. Ch. 43. (Jarvis, Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it. 5648 Cicero: The Tusculan Disputations. Bk. ii. Sec. 27. (Yonge, Translator.) No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue. 5649 Cicero: The Tusculan Disputations. Bk. i. Sec. 45. (Yonge, Translator.) Virtue does not truly reward her votary if she leaves him sad and half doubtful whether it would not have been better to serve vice. 5650 George William Curtis: Harper's Magazine, I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen. 5651 Dickens: Speeches, Literary and Social. III. Virtue is the truest liberty. 5652 Owen Felltham: Resolves. Pt. i. Of Reward and Service. Virtue were a kind of misery if fame were all the garland that crowned her. 5653 Owen Felltham: Resolves. Pt. i. Of Fame. Hast thou virtue ? acquire also the graces and beauties of virtue. 5654 Benjamin Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanac. There was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous. 5655 Benjamin Franklin: The Busy-Body. No. 3. Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy. 5656 Benjamin Franklin: The Busy-Body. No. 3. That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel. 5657 Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield. Ch. 5. Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues. 5658 Bishop Hall: Christian Moderation. Introduction. I have known persons without a friend never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies. 5659 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 68. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. 5660 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 276. The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him. 5661 Hazlitt: Characteristics. No. 128. Virtue, for us, is obedience to God in Christ. 5662 Roswell D. Hitchcock: Eternal Atonement. III. Religion. Doing God's Will. Virtue should move easily and gracefully only as it is strong, but it should become strong that it may move easily and gracefully, and thus become to all men as beautiful as it is obligatory. 5663 Mark Hopkins: The Connection between Taste and Morals. Lecture ii. The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue. 5664 Hume: Essays. III. That Politics may be reduced to a Science. It is virtue that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere. 5665 Ben Jonson: Timber; or, Discoveries made upon Men and Matter. Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives a flavor to the smallest leaves of life. 5666 Joubert: Pensées. No. 181. (Attwell, Translator.) Virtue when a matter of expediency and calculation is the virtue of vice. 5667 Joubert: Pensées. No. 132. (Attwell, Translator.) The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue. 5668 La Bruyère: Characters. Of the Great. (Rowe, Translator.) Virtue would not go far did not vanity escort her. 5669 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune. 5670 La Rochefoucauld: Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims. No. 25. We seldom speak of the virtue which we have, but much oftener of that which we lack. 5671 Lessing: Minna von Barnhelm. II. 1. (E. R. T., Translator.) ter. 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 characThe 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. 5672 Macaulay Essays. Machiavelli. (Edinburgh Review, March, 1827.) The regular path of virtue is to be pursued without any bend, and from no view to emolument. 5673 Mencius: Bk. vii. Pt. ii. Ch. 33, Sec. 2. (Legge, I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without heat and dust. 5674 Milton: Areopagitica. Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. The actions of just and pious men do not darken in their middle course. Milton: The Reason of Church Government urged 5675 against Prelaty. Virtue is necessary to a republic. 5676 Ch. 7. Montesquieu: Spirit of Laws. Bk. iii. Ch. 9. (Nugent, Translator.) Virtue is safe only when it is inspired. 5677 Charles H. Parkhurst: Sermons. II. Human Spirit and Divine Inspiration. |