Marcel Proust Quotes

Evil borders upon good, and vices are confounded with virtues; as the report of good qualities is delightful to a well-disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should not be offensive.

This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

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

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.

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

This is not the most right I've ever been.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

A book must have moral purpose to be any good. Why, I don't know.

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?

I think I wear my hypocrisy on my sleeve. I would never say I'm not a complete hypocrite.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.