Quote of the Day (Desiderius Erasmus, on ‘Conniving at Your Friends' Vices’)

“Conniving at your friends' vices, passing them over, being blind to them and deceived by them, even loving and admiring your friends' egregious faults as if they were virtues—does not this seem pretty close to folly?”— Dutch monk and Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), In Praise of Folly (1509)

It also seems pretty close to complicity in an emerging American autocracy.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Francis de Sales, on Protecting Against a Vice by a Contrary Virtue)

“When attacked by some vice, we must practice the contrary virtue as much as we can and refer all the others to it. By this means we will vanquish our enemy and at the same time advance in all the virtues. Thus if assaulted by pride or anger, I must devote and direct all my actions to humility and meekness and adapt all exercises of prayer, the sacraments, prudence, constancy, and sobriety to this end. To sharpen his tusks the wild boar rubs and polishes them with his other teeth and thus files and sharpens them all. So also a virtuous man undertakes to perfect himself in the virtue most needed for his own protection must file and polish it by exercise of the other virtues.” —St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church, Introduction to the Devout Life, translated by John K. Ryan (1609)

Quote of the Day (Tallulah Bankhead, With Characteristically Sober Advice)

“Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.”—Attributed to actress Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)

Quote of the Day (Alexander Pope, on Vice)

“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.”—Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle Two (1734)