Piety and corruption go together like hot dogs and mustard. They have to. No one can fulfill the demands of piety; as a daily demand, it is inhuman. So it inspires the opposite—just for the sheer health of the body, if not the soul. – Norman Mailer, “Primitive Man, Art and Science, Evil and Judgment,” The Spooky A

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice. – Henry David Thoreau

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us. – Robert S. Lynd

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg