Bret Harte Quotes

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

Though a man cannot abstain from being weak, he may from being vicious.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

Not every great man is a grand human being.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents.

The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.

Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.

My character is not flawless.

I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.

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.

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.

Life would be pretty boring if we didn't have vices.

If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weakness and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than history.

Human nature is weak enough and sufficiently beset by temptations without government adding to them and generating crime.

Only great men have great faults. Only great men have great faults.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Nobody on this earth is perfect. Everybody has their flaws; everybody has their dark secrets and vices.

No one is above temptation. No one is above life in general.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.