Plutarch Quotes

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

Just because somebody cusses doesn't make him a bad person. Just because a guy doesn't cuss doesn't make him a good person.

Oh, 'tis not my qualities they object to! 'Tis my lack of vice.

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teachh us vice.

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.

... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

never judge anyone by their appearance, or the car they drive, or the house they live in, or even by the words they say. judge people by their actions. that's how you know whether they're bad or good." - perfect Summer

Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.

Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice.

The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice.

A vice is merely a pleasure to which somebody has objected.

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

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be, few in the extreme, but all in the degree.

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Who was it who said that every virtue contains its corresponding vice? C.S. Lewis? Virginia Woolf? You forget. But it has always worried you that what the virtue of wit contained was the vice of scorn.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.