Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Honoré de Balzac

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy - a vice which yields no return?

Character | Envy | Vice |

Honoré de Balzac

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Character | Vice |

Hugh Blair

Sentiment and principle are often mistaken for each other, though, in fact, they widely differ. Sentiment is the virtue of ideas; principle the virtue of action. Sentiment has its seat in the had; principle, in the heart. Sentiment suggest fine harangues and subtle distinctions; principle conceives just notions, and performs good actions in consequence of them. Sentiment refines away the simplicity of truth, and the plainness of piety; and "gives us virtue in words, and vice in deeds."

Action | Character | Deeds | Good | Heart | Ideas | Piety | Sentiment | Simplicity | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Words | Vice |

Jean de La Bruyère

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Character | Deceit | Light | Man | Modesty | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

As faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness of the mind. Wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than hatred, much more are they to be pitied, and not abhorred, whose minds are oppressed with wickedness, the greatest malady that may be.

Body | Character | Compassion | Disease | Mind | Wickedness | Vice |

Arnold Geulincx

My will does not produce the motive power to move my limbs. Rather, he who imparted motion to matter, and ordained its laws, shaped my will also; he thus joined together two utterly different things - the movement of matter and the decision of my will in such a way that whenever my will desires some action, the desired bodily movement will occur and vice versa, without there being any causation involved, or any influence of the one upon the other. It is just as if there were two clocks appropriately adjusted with reference to each other and the time of day in such a way that when one struck the hour the other immediately did likewise.

Action | Character | Day | Decision | Influence | Power | Time | Will | Vice |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

There is no truth which personal vice will not distort.

Character | Truth | Will | Vice |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The tender mind is oft deterred from vice by another's shame.

Character | Mind | Shame | Vice |

David Hume

The distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.

Character | Distinction | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

William Henry Irwin, aka "Will"

Like gluttony or drunkenness, hatred seems an agreeable vice when you practice it yourself, but disgusting when observed in others.

Character | Gluttony | Practice | Vice |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

To flee from vice is the beginning of virtue.

Beginning | Character | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

David Hume

Morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.

Action | Character | Morality | Sentiment | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

Bad passions become more odious in proportion as the motives to them are weakened; and gratuitous vice cannot be too indignantly exposed to reprehension. No man ever arrived suddenly at the summit of vice.

Character | Man | Motives | Vice |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

There will be nothing more that posterity can add to our immoral habits; our descendants must have the same desires and act the same follies as their sires. Every vice has reached its zenith.

Character | Nothing | Posterity | Will | Vice |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Weaknesses, so called, are nothing more nor less than vice in disguise!

Character | Disguise | Nothing | Vice |

James Mackintosh, fully Sir James Mackintosh

Selfishness is a vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and as such, condemned by self-love.

Character | Love | Self | Selfishness | Self-love | Happiness | Vice |

Richard Mant

There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.

Attainment | Beginning | Character | Choice | Darkness | Desire | Evil | Feelings | Good | Heart | Light | Man | Means | Possessions | Right | Understanding | Will | Wrong | Zeal | Vice |