Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the...

And do you know why we have not the power to attain this Stoic ideal? It is because we refuse to believe in our power. Nay, of a surety, there is something else which plays...

Culture, like science, is no protection against demons.

O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live…Let nobody...

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they...

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

It’s Shakespeare, to have a single family in which human flaws and virtues are on such vivid display—and the constant struggle between those vices and those virtues to try to do good and fulfill one’s...

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mockThe meat it feeds on.

If you didn’t do anything that wasn’t good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous. Have you noticed that? I’d...

The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

He parked his car carefully, made sure he’d set all the locks and the alarm. On the steps he kept looking behind him, snapping glances into shadows like he expected this to be a set-up...

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but – what is worse – the slave of as many...

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

yea, ” and no one contradicts you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment...

To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her...

Nature evaluates a character on the basis of its merits, not demerits.

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.

We all have vices, visible and invisible. Some we deliberately keep secret. Others we don’t even realize or we refuse to admit we have…Vices can be lots of fun, or they can turn your life...

True sense of humour and true, deep happiness never depend on the after effects of destructive vices

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