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

“Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.”

“Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.”

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

“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.”

“On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”