Sue Grafton Quotes

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

... a moral skunk .... [who has] debauched America ...

In every extreme there is vice and not virtue.

There are some acts of justice which corrupt those who perform them.

… vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Those who make virtue their profession are the ruin of virtue.

The people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station.

The perception of the right of every man to do pretty much as he pleases…. [which will produce] a general profligacy and corruption such as this country has never known.

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

When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity. The Honourable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honourable murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a monster rather than a man. Virtue is inflamed at the violation, and sober reason calls it nonsense.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified