Francois de La Rochefoucauld Vices Quotations

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

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.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

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.

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.

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.

Weakness is more opposed to virtue than is vice.

When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.

Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.

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.