Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
Vices are ingredients of virtues just as poisons are ingredients of remedies. Prudence mixes and tempers them and uses them effectively against life's ills.
We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices.
Nothing is given so profusely as advice.
Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.
We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.
We give advice, we do not inspire conduct.
Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.
When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.
We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.
The person giving the advice returns the confidence placed in him with a disinterested eagerness... and he is usually guided only by his own interest or reputation.
Sometimes there is equal or more ability in knowing how to use good advice than there is in giving it.
Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.
We give nothing so freely as advice.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
There is nothing men are so generous of as advice.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.
What keeps us from abandoning ourselves entirely to one vice, often, is the fact that we have several.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
It takes nearly as much ability to know how to profit by good advice as to know how to act for one's self.
Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.
Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
We are never so generous as when giving advice.
It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.
Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.
What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.
The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.
Self-love, as it happens to be well or ill conducted, constitutes virtue and vice.
High fortune makes both our virtues and vices stand out as objects that are brought clearly to view by the light.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.