Vice

“ The paths of Vice are sometimes strewed with roses, but then they are for ever infamous for many a thorn, for many a cankerworm: those of Virtue are strewed with roses purely, and those eternally unfading ones.
If you do me then justice, you will esteem me perfectly consistent in the incense I burn to Virtue. If I have painted Vice in all its gayest colours, if I have decked it with flowers, it has been solely in order to make the worthier, the solemner sacrifice of it to Virtue. ”

“ We see how Reason calms the raging Mind,
And how contending Passions urge Mankind:
Some, won by Virtue, glow with sacred fire;
Some, lur’d by Vice, indulge the low desire;
Whilst others, won by either, now pursue
The guilty Chace, now keep the good in view;
For ever wretched, with themselves at strife,
They lead a puzzled, vext, uncertain Life;
For, transient Vice bequeaths a lingering Pain,
Which transient Virtue seeks to cure in vain. ”

“ Sin if thou wilt, but then in secret sin.
This maxim's into common favour grown,
Vice is no longer vice, unless 'tis known.
Virtue, indeed, may barefaced take the field;
But vice is virtue when 'tis well conceal'd.
Should raging passion drive thee to a whore,
Let Prudence lead thee to a postern door ”

“ I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. ”

“ What afflicted and terrified him far more than all this, was the perversion of all ideas, this fearful evil, the corrupting of all notions; vice, in truth, is taken for virtue, virtue counted for vice. ”

“ Who that has glowed over this exalted picture will tell us that we must make Virtue prosperous in order to allure to it, or clothe Vice with misery in order to revolt us from its image? Oh! who, on the contrary, would not learn to adore Virtue, from the bitterest sufferings of such a votary, a hundredfold more than he would learn to love Vice from the gaudiest triumphs of its most fortunate disciples? ”

“ How it happened that the vice which inevitably attaches itself to such conduct, self-evident, gross, and glaring as it is, fatal to private morals and public virtue, odious in its practice and hellish in its consequences, how the baneful complexion of this monster vice should at first so totally escape me is more than I can declare. Hurry of thought, confusion of intellect, and eagerness of passion are the only probable conjectures I can make. ”

“ What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown. ”

“ You, like the Cameleon, can put on any colour, can turn vice into virtue, and virtue into vice, to deceive your masters; and under the specious pretence of religion can commit the greatest barbarities. But tho’ under the shelter of that reverend name, you think all your iniquities undiscovered, so you possess your prince with the abominable zeal of persecution; yet heaven sees and detests your hypocrisy, and even men at long-run, discover the cheat. Oh! ye unworthy enemies of virtue, whose only aim is to raise your own fortunes upon the ruin of others. How useful are you to the Devil? ”

“ Who is it, for instance, who mocks at confession and communion, or despises and rails at the commands of the Church? It is the man addicted to vice, who finds it difficult to confess the shameful deeds which he commits over and over again. Who begins to, doubt about eternal punishment? The man addicted to vice, who trembles at the thought of hell, and heartily wishes that such a place did not exist. It is vice, the sinful gratification of the passions, which has produced heresies, and it is vice which keeps them alive. ”

“ Not to know vice at all, and keep true state,
Is virtue and not fate:
Next to that virtue, is to know vice well,
And her black spite expel. ”

“ If the intercourse of mankind in some instances be introductive of vice, the want of it as certainly excludes the exertion of the noblest virtues; and, if the seeds of virtue are indeed in the heart, they often lie dormant, and even unknown to the savage possessor. ”

“ But the fact remains that virtue is on one side of the hair and vice on the other. There are some days here so still and radiant, however, that it seems as if vice itself, steeped in such an air and such a sea, might be diluted into innocence. ”

“ This is not that habit which incorporates us into vice, and conforms even our understanding itself to it; nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by gusts troubles and blinds our souls, and for the time precipitates us, judgment and all, into the power of vice. ”

“ Nay, though it is, I believe, impossible to give vice a true relish of honour and glory, or, though we give it riches and power, to give it the enjoyment of them, yet it contaminates the food it can't taste, and sullies the robe which neither fits nor becomes it, till virtue disdains them both. ”

“ Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. ”

“ I see vice, and crime, and shame mantling on the brow of those who indulge therein; and at the sight of so much misery and degradation I am tempted to utter imprecations, and almost blush that I am a man. ”

“ Why, God bless my soul, do you call ingratitude—the basest, most unfilial, most treacherous ingratitude—no vice, sir? You may be a very excellent young man, but if you gloss over things in that fashion, your moral sense must be perverted, sir—strangely perverted. ”

“ Remember that vice, like a poisonous herb, brings death to those who taste it; and when it once harbors in the mind it is difficult to dispel it. If in passing through the streets thou meetest with a froward youth who appears agreeable to thee, give him no correspondence, but dissemble and pass on. ”

“ I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have tried in its agreeable varieties, and mean, on my return, to cut all my dissolute acquaintance, leave off wine and carnal company, and betake myself to politics and decorum. ”

“ But it is not only that extreme of vice which stands next to virtue, which betrays us into these mistakes. We are deceived too, as he shows us, from ver. 220 to 231, by our observations concerning the other extreme. For, from the extreme of vice being unsettled, men conclude that vice itself is only nominal, at least rather comparative than real. ”

“ He ne'er offended with a jest;
But laughed to hear an idiot quote
A verse from Horace learned by rote.
Vice, if it e'er can be abashed,
Must be or ridiculed, or lashed.
If you resent it, who's to blame?
He neither knows you, nor your name.
Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,
Because its owner is a dukel?
His friendships, still to few confined,
Were always of the middling kind;
No fools of rank, or mongrel breed,
Who fain would pass for lords indeed:
Where titles give no right or power,
And peerage is a withered flower ”

“ Those, however, who, carrying on the agitations against it, have had their eyes more and more widely opened to the vice, assert or imply in their speeches and petitions that the vice is not only great but growing. ”

“ If so, what monstrous vice is this that deserves not the title of cowardice, that finds no name villainous enough to designate it by, that nature disowns having brought forth, and that the tongue of men refuses to name? ”

“ What a real voluptuous feeling they had for dirt and gloom and sordidness and boredom, and all the horrors of vice. They pretended they were trying to dissuade people from vice by enumerating its horrors. ”

“ for vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment. ”

“ Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost? ”

“ My lavish expenditures and liberal benefactions attracted to me a number of parasites, and men older than myself led me into the paths of vice, and taught me how to gather the flowers of sin which blossom around the borders of hell. ”

“ Take any action allow'd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; ”

“ He was then able to discern, that if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is, perhaps, itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. ”

“ Forsake the foolish, converse not with them, conform not to their ways, have no fellowship with the works of darkness, or with those that deal in such works." The first step towards virtue is to shun vice, and therefore to shun the vicious. ”

“ Of the multitude of those who fall into vice, many ultimately marry, and, with injured moral qualities and corrupted tastes, become the creators of poor men’s homes. The rest drift into a permanent life of vice. ”

“ But the vices mentioned are not the worst, the traces of which we see stamped upon the faces of hundreds of boys, some of whom, too, would scorn to commit any one of the sins named. There is another vice, still more terrible, more blighting in its effects, a vice which defiles, diseases, and destroys the body, enervates, degrades, and finally dethrones the mind, debases and ruins the soul. It is to this vice that we wish especially to call attention. ”

“ Therefore a habit either of virtue or of vice, may be corrupted by a judgment of reason, whenever its motion is contrary to such vice or virtue, whether through ignorance, passion or deliberate choice. ”

“ Indeed, the dividing line, between virtues run wild and so-called vice, is apt to be elastic; and the very qualities which might be our salvation become our perdition when they take the wrong turn—a depressing fact until one remembers that it cuts two ways. ”

“ Vice is a highly probable consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly prevail; but it ought not, perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary consequence. The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil. ”

“ We have now set before you, what we conceive to be the principal cause leading to intemperance, dishonesty, and crime. True, there may be some exceptions to this, but we are conscious, that it is the conduct of those very men, who are declaiming against intemperance and crime, that first drives their fellow creatures into those deplorable haunts of vice. ”

“ VICE, (1) (Through Fr. from Lat. vitium) , a fault, blemish, more specifically a moral fault, hence depravity, sin, or a particular form of depravity. In the medieval morality plays a special character who acted as an attendant on the devil was styled “the Vice,” but sometimes took the name of specific vices such as Envy, Fraud, Iniquity and the like. He was usually dressed in the garb that is identified with that of the domestic fool or jester, and was armed with a wooden sword or dagger. ”

“ Could most men, at least, on a strict scrutiny of their hearts and lives, carry their pretensions higher? But,
2. But let us be indulgent to human virtue, and suppose it pure and active enough to work out all the guilt, which vice had contracted, could it do more than cancel the punishment due to vice, and should we be authorized to expect more than a full remission of it? ”

“ For, as whatever was passion in the contemplation of a man, being brought forth by his will into action, is vice and the bondage of sin; ”

“ How few respect or use thee as they ought!
But all shall give account of every wrong,
Who dare dishonour or defile the tongue;
Who prostitute it in the cause of vice,
Or sell their glory at a market-price; ”

“ Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,—error. ”

“ But in this instance I was seduced by no love of low company, nor disposition to indulge in low vices. I have always despised the brutally vulgar; and I have always had a disgust at vice, whether in high or low life. ”

“ In such periods when one world is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused, and all attempts bring forth bizarre results. He who wishes to preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems virtue. ”