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VILLAINY
[ Also see Baseness Bribery Crime Guilt Knavery Malice Mischief Sin Vice Wickedness Wrong ]

Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery; and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband.
      - Charles Caleb Colton

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.
      - Charles Caleb Colton

Villainy, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture.
      - Oliver Goldsmith

The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy; a still rabies is more dangerous than the paroxysms of a fever. Fear the boisterous savage of passion less than the sedately grinning villain.
      - Johann Kaspar Lavater (John Caspar Lavater)

Why here's a villain,
  Able to corrupt a thousand by example.
      - Philip Massinger

Calm, thinking villains, whom no faith could fix,
  Of crooked counsels and dark politics.
      - Alexander Pope, Temple of Fame (l. 410)

He hath out-villained villainy so far, that the rarity redeems him.
      - William Shakespeare

The multiplying villainies of nature
  Do swarm upon him.
      - William Shakespeare

The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
      - William Shakespeare

Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes;
  That when I note another man like him
    I may avoid him.
      - William Shakespeare

O villainy! Ho! let the door be lock'd.
  Treachery! seek it out.
      - William Shakespeare,
        Hamlet Prince of Denmark
         (Hamlet at V, ii)

Villain and he be many miles asunder.
      - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
         (Juliet at III, v)

Hadst not thou been by,
  A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
    Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame,
      This murder had not come into my mind;...
      - William Shakespeare,
        The Life and Death of King John
         (King John at IV,ii)

The learned pate
  Ducks to the golden fool. All's obliquy;
    There's nothing level in our cursed natures
      But direct villainy.
      - William Shakespeare,
        The Life of Timon of Athens
         (Timon at IV, iii)

But then I sigh, and, with a piece of Scripture,
  Tell them that Gods bids us do good for evil:
    And thus I clothe my naked villainy
      With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ,
        And seems a saint, when most I play the devil.
      - William Shakespeare,
        The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
         (King Richard at I, iii)


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Last Revised: 2018 December 9




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