Steve, anyone who tells you that vinyl always sounds better than cd or vice versa does not know what they are talking about. The turntable or cd player is only one small part of the system that determines the quality of the sound you hear. There are many cd based systems that sound better than most vinyl based systems and vice versa.
Some albums recorded all analog simply sound bad. Bad recording, bad pressing, warped, scratched, worn out, spindle hole off center, there are plenty of ways to make a vinyl record sound bad.
There are also many cds that were never released on vinyl, so, by default the cd sounds better. The cd boom caused the release of compilations of music from the 1920s to the present that would be unavailable otherwise.
If you like classical, you can purchase a very nice sounding SACD player for not a lot of money (Marantz SA8005 for example) and have access to a huge number of modern classical recordings in excellent sound quality.
You seem to be a guy who is getting into vinyl and wants some assurance that you're doing the right thing. If it sounds good to you, you're doing the right thing. But you don't have to choose one format exclusively. I think it would be a mistake to do that. Keep your options open and enjoy the best of both formats.