Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress
As quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23
“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”
According to The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by F. B. Carpenter, Lincoln quoted this as having been said to him by a fellow-passenger in a stagecoach. See also "Washington during the War", Macmillan's Magazine 6:24 http://books.google.com/books?id=rB4AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=folks (May 1862) <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.
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Abraham Lincoln618
16th President of the United States 1809–1865Related quotes
“You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader
(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 380]
“I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.”
John Steinbeck book The Short Reign of Pippin IV
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704) French serman writer
as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137
“To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.”
Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima
stultitia caruisse.
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
"On Cant and Hypocrisy"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)
“More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.”
Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer
The Analysis of the Hunting Field (1846) ch. 1
“Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.”
G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Sins of Prince Saradine
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)
“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
Letter to Major-General Robert Howe (17 August 1779), published in "The Writings of George Washington": 1778-1779, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (1890)
Paraphrased variants:
Few men have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder
1770s
“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist