Pauline Kael Quotes

Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds, to destroy them.

No one every suddenly became depraved.

When a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

We are not far from the kind of moral decay that has brought on the fall of other nations and peoples.

A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream.

Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.

[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.

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

. . . if gold rust, what then will iron do?/ For if a priest be foul in whom we trust/ No wonder that a common man should rust. . . .

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything!

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

When a religion or ideology becomes dominant, the lack of controls will result in widening spirals of license leading to degradation and corruption.

At length corruption, like a general flood (So long by watchful ministers withstood), Shall deluge all; and avarice, creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun.

Selfishness is much more than an ordinary problem because it activates all the cardinal sins! It is the detonator in the breaking of the Ten Commandments.

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk.

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.