“People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.”
Source: The Last Years of a Rebel (1967), p. 24
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Edith Sitwell 50
British poet 1887–1964Related quotes
Of the Greek approach to astronomy; p. 1.
History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century (1885; 3rd ed 1893)
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.
“The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.”
Review of Aiken’s Life of Addison (1843)
“Virtue with poverty didst thou prefer
To the possession of great wealth with vice.”
Canto XX, lines 26–27 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
"Zia Haider Rahman's In The Light of What We Know" Books& Arts in ABC http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/zia-haider-rahman/6517150?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter June 3, 2015. Retrieved on 2015-06-03.
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
Source: The Grapes of Wrath
