Aphorisms Galore!

Vice and Virtue

161 aphorisms  ·  5 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/5nmjgd34  ·  submitted 1997

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/i6tlcabi  ·  submitted 1997

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

Robert Orben, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/hf615shl  ·  submitted 1997

On the whole, human beings want to be good -- but not too good and not quite all the time.

George Orwell, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/gpt56czo  ·  submitted 1997

That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.

Dorothy Parker, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/4uvnidhy  ·  submitted 1997

Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.

Blaise Pascal, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/eccda2wq  ·  submitted 1997

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/jq7rxlqz  ·  submitted 1997

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Jules Renard, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/dyq1q946  ·  submitted 1997

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.

Cardinal Richelieu, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/umrsfwb2  ·  submitted 1997

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

La Rochefoucauld, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/g42cvkx0  ·  submitted 1997

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

John D. Rockefeller, in Vice and Virtue and Wealth and Poverty

tiny.ag/ubsgpw2q  ·  submitted 1997

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

James Branch Cabell, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/tgkornhe  ·  submitted 1997

Time Enough for Love (paperback)

Yield to temptation -- it may not pass your way again.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (Lazarus Long), in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/mgrteolp  ·  submitted 2011 by peter

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert J. Hanlon, in Altruism and Cynicism and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/e2igybvl  ·  submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Three Versions of Judas", in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/zl0ikbnv  ·  submitted 1997

Coward: one who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce, in Vice and Virtue and War and Peace

tiny.ag/ca72ttqk  ·  submitted 1997

It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

Ambrose Bierce, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/9te2rxr1  ·  submitted 1997

A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent

William Blake, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/9uv5rp2p  ·  submitted 1997

He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.

William Blake, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/mabd7tri  ·  submitted 1997

Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.

Arnold H. Glasgow, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/tymlwb79  ·  submitted 1997

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in Vice and Virtue and Work and Recreation