Aphorisms Galore!

Vice and Virtue

161 aphorisms  ·  5 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/dtrgibi2  ·  submitted 1997

When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better.

Mae West, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/dbuk2zcq  ·  submitted 1997

When choosing between evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before.

Mae West, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/cjkab7en  ·  submitted 1997

I can resist everything except temptation.

Oscar Wilde, in Altruism and Cynicism and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/e2kqoyj7  ·  submitted 1997

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Oscar Wilde, in Success and Failure and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/qyfvan9d  ·  submitted 1997

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

Oscar Wilde, 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/mgrteolp  ·  submitted 2011 by peter

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert J. Hanlon, in Altruism and Cynicism and 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/krxruwjx  ·  submitted 1999

Following the Equator (paperback)

Be good and you will be lonesome.

Mark Twain, Following the Equator, in Happiness and Misery and Vice and Virtue

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/uj7gzt1i  ·  submitted 1997

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

Jonathan Swift, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/bungm82p  ·  submitted 1997

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Henry David Thoreau, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/iufy8ewr  ·  submitted 1999

I should not talk so much about myself were there anybody else whom I knew as well.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, in Vice and Virtue