Vicesimus Knox Quotes

We must carefully teach children to detest vices for what they consist in; we must teach them their natural ugliness, so that they flee them not only in their deeds but in their minds: the very thought of them should be hateful, whatever mask they hide behind.

I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.

All sensible people agree in thinking that large seminaries of young ladies, though managed with all the vigilance and caution which human abilities can exert, are in danger of great corruption.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.

God commands (people) to maintain justice, kindness, and proper relations with their relatives. He forbids them to commit indecency, sin, and rebellion.

Study to sever pleasure from vice.

The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.

L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.

The vices of others we have before our eyes, our own are behind our backs.

The vices are very justly man's executioners.

O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee?

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

You must master the vices. You know that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well. If, however, a thing is not worth doing then it's worth doing fabulously, amazingly, with grace, style and panache.”

No vice exists which does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.