Quotes About Morality

Without the karma of good deeds, they are only destroying themselves.

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave.

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues: hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

Love the sinner and hate the sin.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times.

For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Nay, it cannot be doubted but that it is the man himself who sins when he does sin, because He, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew not that fate, or fortune, or something else would sin, but that the man himself would sin, who, if he wills not, sins not. But if he shall not will to sin, even this did God foreknow.

But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury.

And it was manifested unto me, that those things be good which yet are corrupted; which neither were they sovereignly good, nor unless they were good could be corrupted: for if sovereignly good, they were incorruptible, if not good at all, there were nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption injures, but unless it diminished goodness, it could not injure.

For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself.

Of these plays, the most inoffensive are comedies and tragedies, that is to say, the dramas which poets write for the stage, and which, though they often handle impure subjects, yet do so without the filthiness of language which characterizes many other performances; and it is these dramas which boys are obliged by their seniors to read and learn as a part of what is called a liberal and gentlemanly education.

Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and the law written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will abide a thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself.

For, as far as this life of mortals is concerned, which is spent and ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose government a dying man lives, if they who govern do not force him to impiety and iniquity?

For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name "evil."

For how could I justly be blamed and prohibited from loving false things, if it were false that I loved them?

We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is not hers, but his who violates her.

Sound judgment is to be preferred even to examples, and indeed examples harmonize with the voice of reason; but not all examples, but those only which are distinguished by their piety, and are proportionately worthy of imitation.

Therefore we are by no means compelled, either, retaining the prescience of God, to take away the freedom of the will, or, retaining the freedom of the will, to deny that He is prescient of future things, which is impious. But we embrace both. We faithfully and sincerely confess both. The former, that we may believe well; the latter, that we may live well.

Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave.

An unjust law is no law at all.

Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

You can live, provided you live; that is, you can live for ever, provided you live a good life.

The fellow who eggs you on to avenge yourself will rob you of what you were going to say as we forgive our debtors. When you have forfeited that, all your sins will be held against you; absolutely nothing is forgiven.