Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Vice
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
Shakespeare.—Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 3. (The Friar.)
To sanction vice, and hunt decorum down.
Byron.—English Bards.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Pope.—Essay on Man, Epi. II. Line 217.
I can gild vice,
And praise it into alchymy, till it go
For perfect gold.
Randolph.—The Muses’ Looking-glass, Act IV. Scene 5.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
Shakespeare.—King Lear, Act V. Scene 3. (Edgar to Edmund.)
Children in their rudiments to vices
Old men to shew examples.
Fletcher.—Thierry and Theodoret, Act I. Scene 1.
Vice gets more in this vicious world than piety.
Fletcher.—Love’s Cure, Act III. Scene 1.
The ghosts of men, in former times,
Whose public virtues were their crimes.
Churchill.—The Duellist, Book I. Line 163.
Raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices.
Swift.—Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, Ch. 10.
Vice many times finds such loud friends,
That preachers are charm’d silent.
Webster.—The White Devil. The Arraynment of Vittoria. (Monticelso to her.)
Vice in its own pure native ugliness.
Crabbe.—Tales of the Hall, Book XI.
Where th’ extreme of vice was ne’er agreed.
Pope.—Essay on Man, Epi. II. Line 221.