Aphorisms Galore!

Vice and Virtue

161 aphorisms  ·  5 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/ubdtlbzz  ·  submitted 1999 by Glenn Troester

When you're angry, take a deep breath and count to ten. When you're really angry, swear.

Unknown, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/wobuqdw1  ·  submitted 1997

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

Unknown, (Indian proverb), in Life and Death and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/x2tnoops  ·  submitted 1997

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Macaulay, History of England, I, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/rdqgrf59  ·  submitted 1997

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/bpu9tj3d  ·  submitted 1997

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Abraham Lincoln, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/3klonk4i  ·  submitted 1997

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Abraham Lincoln, in Law and Politics and 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/l4pyn7j8  ·  submitted 1997

I will answer anything I can with honor, but not about others.

John Brown, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/6qdfb14w  ·  submitted 1997

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/xkpfj82n  ·  submitted 1997

Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.

Anatole France, 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/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/koyhdrgm  ·  submitted 1997

The Art of Rhetoric (paperback)

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Aristotle, Rhetoric, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/ctd7inn0  ·  submitted 1997

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right, shame on you.

Louis Armstrong, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/1f9y6qie  ·  submitted 1997

No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting.

Murray Kempton, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/ssgp4mwz  ·  submitted 1997

Be nice to people on your way up because you'll need them on your way down.

Wilson Mizner, in Success and Failure and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/1jfp82uv  ·  submitted 1997

It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.

Molière, in Vice and Virtue