Quotes About Morality

There is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold!

An insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud.

Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives.

It is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, I believe, which no one will gainsay.

There's nothing worse in the world than shameless woman—save some other woman.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.

Politics, these days, is no occupation for an educated man, a man of character. Ignorance and total lousiness are better.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

Wicked men obey out of fear; good men, out of love.

Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.

To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.

Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.

Where the interests of truth are at actual stake, we ought, perhaps, to sacrifice even that which is our own--if, at least, we are to lay any claim to a philosophic spirit.

Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.