Joseph Joubert Quotes

Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

It seems that the world considers whoever gets benefit is the virtuous one

I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Conservatives are often fond of La Rochefoucauld's famous aphorism that 'Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,' and so tend to downplay hypocrisy as a sin. But in the marketplace of ideas they champion, hypocrisy may yet turn out to be the deadliest - or costliest - of sins.

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.