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Vice and Virtue

161 aphorisms  ·  5 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/17uoj5hx  ·  submitted 1997

Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.

Mark Twain, in Vice and Virtue and Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/qnvx9otp  ·  submitted 1997

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/mbwozhf6  ·  submitted 1997

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/q2py4esl  ·  submitted 1997

Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.

Mark Twain, in Life and Death and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/j8lj2pgz  ·  submitted 1997

Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.

Sir John Vanbrugh, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/8v5ai4cz  ·  submitted 1997

These days, the wages of sin depend on what kind of deal you make with the devil.

Kara Vichko, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/4izcdfw7  ·  submitted 1997

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Gore Vidal, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/zrxpvvz6  ·  submitted 1997

All men are equal; it is not birth, but virtue alone, that makes the difference.

Voltaire, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/v7xs8s9o  ·  submitted 1997

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Voltaire, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/wpd94fsg  ·  submitted 1997

The superfluous is very necessary.

Voltaire, 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/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/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/psiwplgd  ·  submitted 1997

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

George Bernard Shaw, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/mnliphwg  ·  submitted 1997

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well dance with it.

George Bernard Shaw, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/7hdzmwue  ·  submitted 1997

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

George Bernard Shaw, in Altruism and Cynicism and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/tsfy8mui  ·  submitted 1997

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

George Bernard Shaw, in Vice and Virtue