Quotes About Ethics

Two wrongs do not make a right; but three rights make a left.

You would not think any duty small, If you yourself were great.

To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God.

Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business, namely, his own character and conduct.

he would perhaps have known that to try too hard to make people good, is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good -- remembering well the beam and the mote; that the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.

Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm.

From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.

Even in the matter of stealing we must think of our own beam before our neighbour's mote. It is not easy to be honest. There is many a thief who is less of a thief than many a respectable member of society.

Knowlegde no doubt made bad people worse, but it must make good people better!

I am sorry I cannot think of a compliment to pay you-without lying, that is.

What is called a good conscience is often but a dull one that gives no trouble when it ought to bark loudest;

respectability to good impulses

Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag.

For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.

I think it far better for a man to go wrong upon his own honest judgment, than to go right upon anybody else's judgment, however honest also.

You must consider that you are but a part of the whole, and that whatever you do to hurt the whole, or injure any of its parts, will return upon you who form one of those parts.

There is no law that sermons shall be the preacher's own, but there is an eternal law against all manner of humbug. Pardon the word.

It is yet better to perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.

Yes, grannie, you are right. You remember how old dame Hope wouldn't take the money you offered her, and dropped such a disdainful courtesy. It was SO greedy of her, wasn't it?

However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make anyone conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets?

For their fancied good, we should never wish our children or our friends to do what we would not do ourselves, if we were in their position. We must accept righteous sacrifices as well as make them.

Truly, if ignorance is the foundation of any man's goodness, it is not worth the wind that upsets it, but in its mere self, ignorance of evil is a negative good.

True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman.

The man is a true man who chooses duty; he is a perfect man who at length never thinks of duty, who forgets the name of it.