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The vices we acquire transform the moral universe in which we live. We begin to forgive those actions that we would have condemned. The more seductive vices seem obviously innocuous. And, in this way, a new ‘innocence’ encroaches.
It is a singular pleasure to meet someone who accepts himself without reluctance and without shame, but does not constantly congratulate himself on his frankness or boast about his sincerity.
No one quite knows, when he justifies a vice, if he does so out of benevolence toward his neighbor, or for his own convenience.
Every man can be satisfied; that is, everything that is vile in man can be satisfied.
The most horrible thing about vice is the corruption of the soul that leads us to ignore even our own disgrace.
What disgusts us in others should make us tremble in fright. Only the weaknesses that we ourselves are capable of can wound us so. Those defects that are not and could not ever be our own, seem to us harmless extravagances.
The disciples of certain vices tend to form private, secretive groups, similar to philosophical or religious societies. However, the similarity does not come from analogous social circumstances: the character of the sect does not have to do with their being in the minority. Rather, it originates from the exclusive possession of a particular worldview. Or more precisely, of a particular experience.
Every vice is an organ of knowledge, an instrument that reveals new aspects of the world. All knowledge holds power over its own means of existing and operating in the world.
There is no good action without punishment, nor bad without reward.
The vices can fill hours of boredom. Vice is the refuge of a yearning for greatness that has been stifled.
If dignity is not reason enough for modesty, vanity ought to suffice.
Virtuousness beyond simple obedience to divine command walks with the petulance of a rich spinster.
No one arouses our hatred as much as he one who manages to keep the promises we made to ourselves early in life. The difficult task is to admire him when there is nothing in us but a meager longing and the hollow shell of an absence.
Admiring without envy, and without hatred, is the only way to recapture the magnificence of the world that has been snatched from us by our own mediocrity.
But our cunning pride tirelessly conspires to slanderous judgments, obscuring the one thing that can return our lost heritage: the lucid and tranquil reflections of intelligence.
Our qualities are often the other side of our defects, and our defects the shadows of our qualities.
The compassion we display to some helps us to justify the envy awakened in us by others.
Men can be divided into the many altruists, busy correcting everyone else,
and the few egoists, busy putting themselves in order.
Every vice is an untidy virtue.
We who wish to avoid participating in this age of envy must daily sever the seven heads of envy from our hearts.
We try to excuse our flaws by supposing they are the reverse of qualities we falsely attribute to ourselves.
Not everything betrays us, but there is nothing that cannot betray us.
Despair is the dark valley through which the soul ascends toward a place untarnished by greed.
We have only the virtues and flaws that we do not suspect.
History incessantly erects and demolishes the statues of different virtues atop the unmoving pedestal of the same vices.
The most disturbing thing about the modern clergy is that their intentions often appear beyond question.
We fail to recognize that we have switched vices, and commonly refer to this as “moral improvement.”
Loyalty is the noblest music on earth.
Individuals, or nations, have different virtues and identical defects.
Depravity is our common heritage.
Yielding to noble temptations prevents us surrendering to base temptations.
The satisfaction of having virtues that everyone respects does not comfort us for lacking those vices that everyone envies.
Humanity tends to locate the pain where there is no wound, the sin where there is no guilt.
The modern individual rebels against the inalterable aspects of human nature in order to avoid correcting the alterable aspects of himself.
The benevolent moron, confident in his good intentions, allows himself to attack others; this is even more heinous than what bad intentions permit the wicked.
Those whose gratitude for a benefit received is transformed into loyalty to the person who has given it, rather than degenerating into the resentment and hatred typically inspired by benefactors- those persons are aristocrats. Even when they walk around in rags.
Whoever denies the bourgeoisie its virtues has been contaminated with the worst of its vices.
Envy differs from the other vices by the ease with which it disguises itself as virtue.
Man never calculates the price of any comfort he gains.
The remainder of the old bourgeoisie used up the last of their remaining virtues in the first World War, bequeathing only their vices to the now homogenously bourgeois world.
Power does not corrupt, it unleashes latent corruption.
One must be wary of those who are said to “have much merit.”
They always have some past to avenge.
There is no one who does not suddenly discover the importance of the virtues he has most despised.
Man is more capable of heroic acts than decent gestures.
The devil doesn’t accomplish much without the careless collaboration of the virtues.
Hypocrisy is not the hypocrite’s tool, but his prison.
We doubt the importance of most virtues so long as we are not confronted with the opposite vice.
Yesterday’s bourgeois forgave himself everything, so long as his sexual conduct was strict.
Today’s bourgeois does the same, so long as he is promiscuous.
There is no greater villainy than to exploit the virtues of an adversary in order to conquer him.
The mechanisms of modern society foster the obnoxious virtues and punish the endearing vices.
The ancient who denied pain, the modern who denies sin— they entangle themselves in identical sophisms.
In every person sleeps the seed of vice and hardly an echo of virtue.
Envy is the key to more stories than sex.
Loyalty is sincere, so long as it does not see itself as a virtue.
Where Christianity disappears, greed, envy, and lust invent a thousand ideologies to justify themselves.
Tolerating even stupid ideas may be a social virtue, but it is a virtue that sooner or later receives its punishment.
Those who call us insolent should remember that we must do what little we can to avenge the simple and the pious.
Note: Dávila was a Colombian political philosopher and in the Latin church. His aphorisms are presented here for the purposes of enjoyment, study, and historical record, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this writer. For more information on Dávila, see this introductory post. For information on how to live your life, go to church and read the Church Fathers/Saints.
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