Quotes About Morality

Bfore Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.

Before Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.

Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Women are not entirely wrong when they reject the moral rules proclaimed in society, since it is we men alone who have made them.

From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well...

It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

I am not so shocked by savages who roast and eat the bodies of their dead as by those who torture and persecute the living.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

The other two are rich and noble; examples of virtue rarely make their home among people like that.

It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious.

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

Profiting little by good examples, I make use of those that are ill, which are everywhere to be found: I endeavor to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as affable as I see others rough; as good as I see others evil: but I propose to myself impracticable measures.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l'homme quelque instinct à l'inhumanité

What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under the same roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?

The way of truth is one and artless: the way of private gain and success in such affairs as we are entrusted with is double, uneven and fortuitous. I

when Dandamys the Wise heard accounts of the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes, he said that they were in every way great personalities, except for their being too subject to venerating the Law: for, to support Law with its authority, true virtue must doff much of its original vigour; and many vicious deeds are done not merely with the Law's permission but at its instigation:13

That is a subtle observation on the part of philosophy: you can both love virtue too much and [B] behave with excess [A] in an action which itself is just. The [B] Voice [A] of God adapts itself fittingly to that bias: 'Be not more wise than it behoveth, but be ye soberly wise.

When people ask why I go on my travels I usually reply that I know what I am escaping from but not what I am looking for. If they tell me that there may be just as little soundness among foreigners and that their morals may be no better than ours, I reply: first that would not be easy: Our wickedness has assumed many faces. Secondly, there is always gain in changing a bad condition for an uncertain one, and that the ills of others do not need to sting us as our own do.