Pastoral Resources

Often, city fathers blamed prostitutes for the disease, and some threatened to brand their cheeks with hot iron if they did not desist from their vices.

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

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

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

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

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

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

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.

As the most extravagant errors were received among the established articles of their faith, so the most infamous vices obtained in their practice, and were indulged not only with impunity, but authorized by the sanction of their laws.

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

Evil borders upon good, and vices are confounded with virtues; as the report of good qualities is delightful to a well-disposed mind, so the relation of the contrary should not be offensive.

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

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

How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.

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.

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.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

For me, I go in and play a few Christian songs for an audience, and now I have people come up and not tell me I'm great, but tell me that my music is helping save their lives, helping them in the Lord, and helping them end their vices.

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.