“Our defects are sometimes the better adversaries when we oppose our vices.”

—  Marguerite Yourcenar

Nos défauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires que nous opposions à nos vices.
Alexis (1929)

Original

Nos défauts sont parfois les meilleurs adversaires que nous opposions à nos vices.

Alexis (1929)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our defects are sometimes the better adversaries when we oppose our vices." by Marguerite Yourcenar?
Marguerite Yourcenar photo
Marguerite Yourcenar 37
French writer 1903–1987

Related quotes

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

3
Sermons

Daniel J. Boorstin photo

“We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Preface
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)
Context: We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.

Livy photo

“We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.”
Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Praefatio, sec. 9
History of Rome

Denis Diderot photo

“We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

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

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“For vice has this defect; it cannot be truly intelligent. Its very motives are its weakness.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 339)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Terence Rattigan photo

“Do you know what le vice Anglais – the English vice – really is? Not flagellation, not pederasty – whatever the French believe it to be. It's our refusal to admit to our emotions. We think they demean us, I suppose.”

Terence Rattigan In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love, Act II. (1973).

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“St. Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Ladder of St. Augustine, st. 1 (1858).

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech at Kennedy Plaza, Providence, Rhode Island (23 August 1902), Presidential Addresses and State Papers (1910), p. 103. <!-- Mem. Ed. XVIII, 76; Nat. Ed. XVI, 64 -->
1900s
Context: Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
But there is another harm; and it is evident that we should try to do away with that. The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

Samuel Johnson photo

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 14, 1763, p. 123
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Related topics