We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.

The purpose of all war is peace.

If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?

God is best known in not knowing him.

This world's a bubble.

The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.

We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.

Custom is second nature.

The soul, which is spirit, can not dwell in dust; it is carried along to dwell in the blood.

He who labours, prays.

The verdict of the world is conclusive.

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

He fashioned hell for the inquisitive.

Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.

I was so happy when they cast me in Chocolat, because it's one of my vices.

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

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.

We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

All institutions are prone to corruption and to the vices of their members.

We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

Vices are often habits rather than passions.

The accumulation of numbers always augments in some measure moral corruptions, and the consequences to health of the various vices incident thereto, are well known.

We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.

The word of God is full of sad and grave counsel, full of the knowledge of God, of examples of virtues, and of correction of vices, of the end of this life, and of the life to come.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

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.