
Vice and Virtue, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
Diary (21 December 1843), referring to Aristotle's Ethics
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Vice and Virtue, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 89
Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate. Variants and derivatives of this that are often quoted include:
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.
“Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
And almost every vice — almighty gold.”
Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, lines 1-2. Comparable to "The flattering, mighty, nay, almighty gold", John Wolcot, To Kien Long, Ode iv; "Almighty dollar", Washington Irving, The Creole Village.
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), The Forest
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Context: In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 196
La modération des grands hommes ne borne que leurs vices. La modération des faibles est médiocrité.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 168.
as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137