Antoine Rivarol Quotes

I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws.

All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

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

A man may have no bad habits and have worse

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.

In public life as in private life, a man of the very highest repute will occasionally go wrong..

Indulgence in frivolous speech not only reveals one's lack of moral character, but it deprives him of good qualities also.

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

I was lucky enough to be raised by a man of great integrity and rectitude. That said, he was also human and had his secret sins, as we all do.

Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.

One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

No man, however enslaved to his appetites, or hurried by his passions, can, while he preserves his intellects unimpaired, please himself with promoting the corruption of others. He whose merit has enlarged his influence would surely wish to exert it for the benefit of mankind. Yet such will be the effect of his reputation, while he suffers himself to indulge in any favourite fault, that they who have no hope to reach his excellence will catch at his failings, and his virtues will be cited to justify the copiers of his vices.

In vain will you fly from one vice if in your wilfulness you embrace another.

Modesty in human beings is praised because it is not a matter of nature, but of will.

Our virtues, as well as our vices, are often scourges for our own backs.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

A good woman is known by what she does; a good man by what he doesn't.