Laurence Sterne Quotes

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

Vice cannot be removed completely, nor is it right that it should be removed.

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.

Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

Never will there be grief enough over the corruption of morals so extensively increasing and promoted by irreligious and obscene writings, theatrical spectacles and meretricious houses established almost everywhere; by other depraved arts and monstrous portents of every error disseminated in all directions; by the abominable impurities of all vices and crimes growing constantly and the deadly virus of unbelief and indifferentism spread far and wide; by contempt for ecclesiastical authority

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it.

Other vices make their own way; this makes way for all vices. He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

The accumulation of numbers always augments in some measure moral corruptions, and the consequences to health of the various vices incident thereto, are well known.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

Unfaithfulness in public stations is deeply criminal …. There is too much corruption even at this infant stage of our republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not infamous.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

In no nook or corner of his head or heart is there the slightest sense of truth or justice.... Morally speaking, his mind must be a howling wilderness.

We have a Sunday code and a weekday code. We preach good and practice evil. We clothe the wolf of our actions in the sheep's clothing of our beautiful phrases.

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

I myself have constantly refused to print anything that might countenance vice or promote immorality, though … I might have gotten much money.