Character Quote by Walter Scott

“Vices have to masquerade as virtues — lust as love, thinly veiled sadism as military discipline, envy as righteous indignation, domestic tyranny as parental concern.”

— Cornelius Plantinga Jr

Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or…

— Samuel Johnson

“Live by old Ethicks and the classical Rules of Honesty. Put no new names or notions upon Authentick Virtues and Vices. Think not that…

— Sir Thomas Browne

“It is by giving fair names to foul actions that those who would start at real vice are led to practise its lessons, under…

— Walter Scott

“Most people indulged in their vices and clung to their virtues based on their responses to temptation and conflict, not because some Other within…

— Dean Koontz

There are some persons on whom virtue sits almost as ungraciously as vice.

— Dominique Bouhours

“People always brag about their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they become insufferable.”

— G.K. Chesterton

One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame.

— Thomas Gray

“To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon…

— Seneca

“We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the vice that…

— Thomas Paine

“Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices.

— Richard Whately