Quotes About Ethics

There are a sort of knight-errants in the world, who, quite contrary to those in romance, are perpetually seeking adventures to bring virgins into distress, and to ruin innocence. When men of rank and figure pass away their lives in these criminal pursuits and practices, they ought to consider that they render themselves more vile and despicable than any innocent man can be, whatever low station his fortune or birth have placed him in.

How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!

Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind.

It is an unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions, at some laudable end.

In short, if you banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.

To be perfectly just is an attribute in the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

If there's a power above us, (And that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works) he must delight in virtue.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,The post of honor is a private station.

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.15

For aesthetics is the mother of ethics. Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe-not empirically, alas, but only theoretically-that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

Life-the way it really is-is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

Hmm. I'm tempted. But what works against my temptation is the ancient junior high code of Omerta. Nobody squeals on nobody, no matter what.

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.