Quotes
Quotes about Vice
'T was good advice, and meant, my son, Be good.
Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet
To think how monie counsels sweet,
How monie lengthened sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises.
Small service is true service while it lasts.
Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one:
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.
So for a good old-gentlemanly vice
I think I must take up with avarice.
But all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.
He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies and cashiering most Kings and Senates and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of printing.
And with my advice, faith I wish you'd take me.
The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.
A banner with the strange device.
Alike were they free from
Fear that reigns with the tyrant, and envy the vice of republics.
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame.
All service ranks the same with God,--
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost
Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
I asked of Echo 't other day
(Whose words are few and often funny),
What to a novice she could say
Of courtship, love, and matrimony.
Quoth Echo, plainly,--"Matter-o'-money."
I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.
This is my world! within these narrow walls,
I own a princely service.
Junius, Aprilis, Septémq; Nouemq; tricenos,
Vnum plus reliqui, Februs tenet octo vicenos,
At si bissextus fuerit superadditur vnus.
Whoever ... prefers the service of princes before his duty to his Creator, will be sure, early or late, to repent in vain.
It is the common vice of all, in old age, to be too intent upon our interests.
Many receive advice, few profit by it.
That it is unwise to be heedless ourselves while we are giving advice to others, I will show in a few lines.
Jupiter has loaded us with a couple of wallets: the one, filled with our own vices, he has placed at our backs; the other, heavy with those of others, he has hung before.
It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,--a practice which has now passed into a proverb. It was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in his studio, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms.... Under these circumstances, they say that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one latchet too few. The next day, the shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticise the leg; upon which Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion beyond the shoes, --a piece of advice which has equally passed into a proverbial saying.
The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.
After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws."
