False Virtues Quotes

A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty.

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.

We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.

I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

The timid man calls himself cautious, the sordid man thrifty.

Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.

These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewards; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness

Wrong people are wrong not because of their faults but because of their presumed virtues.

We have all been hearing from childhood of such things as love, peace, charity, equality, and universal brotherhood; but they have become to us mere words without meaning, words which we repeat like parrots, and it has become quite natural for us to do so. We cannot help it.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.

My friend is one who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am. . . . What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue.

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth.

Among some people arrogance supplies the place of grandeur, inhumanity of decision, and roguery of intelligence.

The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.

Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!