“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” — George Orwell, “The Art of Donald McGill,” Horizon (September 1941)
Tag: virtue
Quote of the Day
“Virtue sometimes pretends. Vice is always sincere.” — Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, Ninth Selection (1992)
Quote of the Day
“Does the love of virtue denote any wish to discover or amend our own faults? No, but it atones for an obstinate adherence to our own vices by the most virulent intolerance to human frailties.” — William Hazlitt, “On the Pleasure of Hating,” The Plain Speaker
Quote of the Day
“It is a false idea of virtue which thinks it demands the sacrifice of inclination and consists only in this sacrifice. An action is not virtuous merely because it is unpleasant to do.” — W. Somerset Maugham, A Writers Notebook
Quote of the Day
“Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.” — Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Quote of the Day
“Impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous.” — Rex Stout, Too Many Clients
Quote of the Day
“All my foundation in virtue was no other than a total ignorance of vice.” — John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Quote of the Day
“There’s no virtue in being old, it just takes a long time.” — Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Quote of the Day
“Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!” — Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son
Quote of the Day
“If there is any better way to teach virtue than by practicing it, I do not know it.” — Elbert Hubbard, “The Better Part,” A message to Garcia and thirteen other things