Many a man's vices have at first been nothing worse than good qualities run wild.

Vice often rides triumphant in virtues chariot.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

Iniquity, committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it.

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of a whole city.

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.

There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices.

Vice, like virtue, Grows in small steps, and no true innocence Can ever fall at once to deepest guilt.

We tolerate without rebuke the vices with which we have grown familiar.

The little vices of the great must needs be accounted very great.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

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

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

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

The most malignant of enemies is the lust which abides within.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us.

We are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

Crime and vice generally require darkness for prowling. They disappear when light plays upon them.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.