A virtue to be serviceable must like gold be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

Samuel Butler
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Those who have wisdom have all: Fools with all have nothing. - Thiruvalluvar

  2. May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity - a virtuous woman. - Mary MacLane

  3. I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue? - Robert A. Heinlein

  4. Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. - John Locke

  5. Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. - George Washington

More Quotes By Samuel Butler
  1. Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

  2. All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

  3. Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change...

  4. [P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

  5. Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

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