Adela Florence Nicolson Quotes

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.

The man who seeks to please God is the man who people are pleased with. The man who seeks to please others won't satisfy anyone.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.

God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.

If Mother Theresa went to Atlantic City, I don't think she'd start playing Blackjack.

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

It is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Nothing is gained except by sacrifice.... Do not degrade it to the level of the brutes.... Make yourselves decent men! ... Be chaste and pure! ... There is no other way. Did Christ find any other way?

Pleasure itself is not a vice

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Character is greater than talent, genius, fame, money, friends - there is nothing to compare with it. A man may have all these and yet remain comparatively useless - be unhappy - and die a bankrupt in soul.

Longing and desire goes further than instant satisfaction. That's human nature.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

I'm not overly greedy.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much.

I've never had any desire to be good. I don't like goodness particularly.

True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits.

We are never like angels till our passion dies.

Virtue is its own reward. We only invented concepts like heaven and hell to describe how we feel. We don't feel good doing bad and it's nice to help someone.