Chrysippus Quotes

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

The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.

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

All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

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.

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

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

No one ever reached the worst of a vice at one leap.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Evil does not grow out of the soil, nor does mischief spring from the ground. Only man is born to do mischief, just as sparks fly upward.

The priests, either from indulgence or carelessness, have allowed the wicked to give loose reins to their lusts

Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.

I feel like every time you think you really understand how deep the seductive power of evil is, it always proves to be one step deeper than you thought possible.

Man has fallen victim to seduction since times immemorial.

We are all afflicted by original sin; people succumbing to temptations to do and to be.

Vice is its own reward.

A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

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.

Man loves his own ruin. The cup is so sweet that though he knows it will poison him, yet he must drink it. And the harlot is so fair, that though he understands that her ways lead down to hell, yet like a bullock he follows to the slaughter till the dart goes through his liver. Man is fascinated and bewitched by sin.

The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong.

Wilde is the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years.

My mother thought Hollywood was a den of iniquity, and people came to terrible bad ends there.

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.