"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)
Context: After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
“Again, there is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion.”
"On Cant and Hypocrisy"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)
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William Hazlitt 186
English writer 1778–1830Related quotes
“In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice.”
Coyne (2011) " For the love of God... scientists in uproar at £1m religion prize http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/for-the-love-of-god-scientists-in-uproar-at-1631m-religion-prize-2264181.html" on independent.co.uk, April 6, 2011
“Idleness is the mother of all vices, but also of all virtues.”
Men of Action
Alain On Happiness (1928)
Epode, lines 1-4
The Works of Ben Jonson, First Folio (1616), The Forest
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god, To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or doubt miracles. is far worse than to deny known facts. Only the obedient, the credulous, the cringers, the kneelers, the meek, the unquestioning, the true believers, are regarded as moral, as virtuous. It is not enough to be honest, generous and useful; not enough to be governed by evidence, by facts. In addition to this, you must believe. These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue.
“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)
Posthumous attributions
Variant: It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.
“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.”