Quotes About Morality

A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.

goodness—what defines a good person. Keep to it in everything you do.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Kingship: to earn a bad reputation by good deeds.

No thefts of free will reported."[—Epictetus.]

If it is not right, do not do it: if it is not true, do not say it. For let your impulse be in your own power.

Even when the gods stood on the side of righteousness, they were concerned with the act more than with the intent.

For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.

that to expect bad men not to do wrong is madness

To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice—it degrades you.

To the best of my judgment, when I look at the human character I see no virtue placed there to counter justice. But I see one to counter pleasure: self-control.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

If it doesn't harm your character, how can it harm your life?

How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavour to flee from another's, which is not.

He that sinneth, sinneth unto himself. He that is unjust, hurts himself, in that he makes himself worse than he was before. Not he only that committeth, but he also that omitteth something, is oftentimes unjust.

About what am I now employing my own soul? On every occasion I must ask myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me which they call the ruling principle? and whose soul have I now,—that of a child, or of a young man, or of a feeble woman, or of a tyrant, or of a domestic animal, or of a wild beast?

To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

BEGIN the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good; just as if the emerald were always saying this: Whatever anyone does or says, I must still be emerald, and keep my color.

The Stoic makes no differentiation between a small act of kindness by a simple person and a great act of virtue from a learned sage. Virtue is virtue, and in both cases the result is happiness for the one who is virtuous.

Justice: so that you'll speak the truth, frankly and without evasions, and act as you should—and as other people deserve.

And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety.

Salvation: to see each thing for what it is— its nature and its purpose. To do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back. What else could it be but to live life fully— to pay out goodness like the rings of a chain, without the slightest gap.

If he have sinned, his is the harm, not mine. But perchance he hath not.