“Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.”

First Dialogue, Delmonce
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)

As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller

Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 5 (3rd edition p. 303)

The Novel: What It Is (1893)

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

Of Adversity
Essays (1625)
Context: The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés.
Epigraph. Note: "This epigraph, which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the Maxims of the first edition, 1665; it is omitted from the second and third, and reappears for the first time in the fourth edition at the head of the Reflections". Aime Martin, editor, Bartlett's Quotations, 1919 edition.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

I.83
Human, All Too Human (1878)