Quotes About Morality

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character.

The highest good was the virtuous life. Virtue alone is happiness, and vice is unhappiness.

If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage—than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what's beyond its control—if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed—and enjoy it to the full.

simply and of your own free will, choose the higher and hold fast to that

that to expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting fig trees not to secrete juice, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh—the inevitable not to happen. What else could they do—with that sort of character?

But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it's right, or benefits others—nothing else. Not because it's more appealing or more popular.

How hast thou behaved hitherto to the gods, thy parents, brethren, children, teachers, to those who looked after thy infancy, to thy friends, kinsfolk, to thy slaves? Consider if thou hast hitherto behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of thee: Never has wronged a man in deed or word.

That every event is the right one. Look closely and you'll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales. Keep looking closely like that, and embody it in your actions: goodness—what defines a good person.

thank the gods for giving me such a brother, who was able by his moral character to rouse me to vigilance over myself, and who, at the same time, pleased me by his respect and affection;

No more roundabout discussion of what makes a good man. Be one!

that their happiness doth consist in a disposition to, and in the practice of righteousness;

that no one does the wrong thing deliberately;

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. And so none of them can hurt me.

Not to wander out of the way, but upon every motion and desire, to perform that which is just: and ever to be careful to attain to the true natural apprehension of every fancy, that presents itself.

El mejor procedimiento para vengarse de los malos es procurar no asemejarse a ellos.

I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity

It's quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live ... while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good.

Whatever any one does or says, I must be good; just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple, were always saying this. Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.

Haga o diga alguien lo que quiera, obligado estoy a ser bueno. Como

Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad.

He also that pursues after pleasures, as that which is truly good and flies from pains, as that which is truly evil: is impious.

We should listen only to those whose lives conform to nature. And the others? He bears in mind what sort of people they are—both at home and abroad, by night as well as day—and who they spend their time with. And he cares nothing for their praise—men who can't even meet their own standards.

This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I