Pamela Hansford Johnson Quotes

Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

Had we been as free from all sins as we were from gluttony and drunkenness we might have been canonized for saints.

The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

I realized that to become a saint one must suffer a great deal, always seek what is best, and forget oneself.

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

There is probably no one, however rigid his virtue, who is not liable to find himself, by the complexity of circumstances, living at close quarters with the very vice which he himself has been most outspoken in condemning -- without altogether recognizing it beneath the disguise of ambiguous behavior which it assumes in his presence.

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Only saints can save the world. And only our own sins can stop us from being saints.

People have their morals, but morals aren't concrete. People think because I'm a Muslim that I pray five times a day, but you're never going to see that on a day-to-day basis. People fluctuate. To me, that was the most specific way to put it, the best way to be like, "I listen to this music, but it's the most violent music on the planet." But I like it, and to make up for it, I don't say the cuss words. That's how I get away with it.

You can't slice up morals.

The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

Virtue by calculation is the virtue of vice.

Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.

If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.