Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness is by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity.

-- "Glory" Conway, in James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Chapter 10

Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue

--- the High Lama, in James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Chapter 8

In context

Conway was startled by the accuracy of the judgment. "That's so," he replied. "I'm unmarried; I have few close friends and no ambitions.

"No ambitions? And how have you contrived to escape those widespread maladies?" 

For the first time Conway felt that he was actually taking part in a conversation. He said: "It always seemed to me in my profession that a good deal of what passed for success would be rather disagreeable, apart from needing more effort than I felt called upon to make. I was in the Consular Service—quite a subordinate post, but it suited me well enough." 

"Yet your soul was not in it?" 

"Neither my soul nor my heart nor more than half my energies. I'm naturally rather lazy." 

The wrinkles deepened and twisted till Conway realized that the High Lama was very probably smiling. "Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue," resumed the whisper. 

vices are habits to be corrected, rather than sins to be punished

--- Matthew Treherne, in the BBC In Our Time program on Purgatory, discussing Dante's Purgatorio, at time code 21:07:

Matthew Treherne: Dante divides the mountain into seven terraces, each of which corresponds to a particular vice. 

Melvyn Bragg: Are they the seven deadly sins? 

Treherne: Yes. Dante would think of these as vices, which are habits to be corrected, rather than sins to be punished - that's a really important distinction to what happens in Hell.

According to Wikipedia, "The Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between vice, which is a habit of sin, and the sin itself, which is an individual morally wrong act. ... It is the sin, and not the vice, that deprives one of God's sanctifying grace and renders one deserving of God's punishment. Thomas Aquinas taught that "absolutely speaking, the sin surpasses the vice in wickedness". On the other hand, even after a person's sins have been forgiven, the underlying habit (the vice) may remain."