It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Bagehot’s aphorism distinguishes moral purity from moral vitality. To be “without vices” suggests self-control and ethical steadiness; yet to be “without temptations” implies a life so sheltered, apathetic, or untested that virtue costs nothing. The saying argues that character is proved—and often strengthened—by the presence of real alternatives: desire, ambition, pleasure, or fear. Temptation supplies the arena in which restraint becomes meaningful rather than merely accidental. In this view, the absence of temptation is not an achievement but a deficiency, because it can signal a lack of imagination, passion, or engagement with the world’s complexities.