N. T. Wright Quotes

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

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.

Vice is its own reward.

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.

Vice is a creature of such hideous mien... that the more you see it the better you like it.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

What is the cause of the great overflow of Vice in this age

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

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

I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large.

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

As a stick, when once it is dry and stiff you may break it, but you can never bend it into a straighter posture; so doth the man become incorrigible who is settled and stiffened into vice.

No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.

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.

Lust is a sharp spur to vice, which always putteth the affections into a false gallop.

The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.

We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'.

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.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed .

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.