“Not to know vice at all, and keep true state,
Is virtue, and not fate:
Next to that virtue is to know vice well,
And her black spite expel.”

“Benevolence is more a vice of pride than a true virtue of the soul.”

“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”

“A key measure of emotional intelligence is knowing that every virtue taken to its extreme becomes a vice.”

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”

“Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.”

“Beware of knowing your virtues; you may lose them. Beware of knowing your vices; you may forgive them.”

“The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable; absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.”

“At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.”

“The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.”