Natalie Clifford Barney Quotes

Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.

You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

The only way to survive among the evil and corrupt is to be even more wicked and more corrupt than they are!

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

Virtue is a positive quality developed by taking a firm stand for the right in temptation, or by the suffering endured in consequence of wrongdoing.

Virtue is an inner strength. It expands your nature.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.

Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.

Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul.