“Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld, book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

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)

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François de La Rochefoucauld156

French author of maxims and memoirs 1613–1680

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall

“Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“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.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 2
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#89
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

“The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Alexander
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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

“The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible…Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'Parliamentary Reform', Quarterly Review, 117, 1865, p. 550

“Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful. The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

'Parliamentary Reform', Quarterly Review, 117, 1865, p. 550

“But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices?”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 2
Context: But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law.

“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.”

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François de La Rochefoucauld156

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