"Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice"
About this Quote
Walpole’s line is the kind of polished provocation the 18th century excelled at: a compliment to virtue that also needles it for being smug. “Virtue knows” is doing sly work. Virtue isn’t just a moral posture here; it’s a calculating mind, capable of accounting. The “farthing” (a tiny coin) makes the joke sharper: the loss isn’t vague or spiritual, it’s itemized down to pocket change. Morality, Walpole implies, is haunted by an exact awareness of what it forgoes.
The subtext is less “go be bad” than “don’t pretend abstinence is effortless.” Virtue often sells itself as pure gain - serenity, honor, self-respect. Walpole counters with a wry admission that restraint contains desire; it’s defined by the pleasures it refuses. If you can price what you’ve lost, you haven’t transcended temptation, you’ve just chosen against it. That makes virtue more human and more hypocritical: it can look down on vice while privately keeping a ledger of vice’s dividends.
Context matters. Walpole, a Whig grandee and master of epistolary gossip, wrote from a culture of manners, reputation, and strategic restraint - where “virtue” often meant social management as much as ethics. His sentence reads like a salon aphorism with teeth: a defense of complexity against moral posturing. It lands because it turns the moral hierarchy inside out. Vice may be vulgar, but virtue, in Walpole’s telling, is never innocent. It is conscious, comparative, and a little resentful.
The subtext is less “go be bad” than “don’t pretend abstinence is effortless.” Virtue often sells itself as pure gain - serenity, honor, self-respect. Walpole counters with a wry admission that restraint contains desire; it’s defined by the pleasures it refuses. If you can price what you’ve lost, you haven’t transcended temptation, you’ve just chosen against it. That makes virtue more human and more hypocritical: it can look down on vice while privately keeping a ledger of vice’s dividends.
Context matters. Walpole, a Whig grandee and master of epistolary gossip, wrote from a culture of manners, reputation, and strategic restraint - where “virtue” often meant social management as much as ethics. His sentence reads like a salon aphorism with teeth: a defense of complexity against moral posturing. It lands because it turns the moral hierarchy inside out. Vice may be vulgar, but virtue, in Walpole’s telling, is never innocent. It is conscious, comparative, and a little resentful.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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