Quotes About Ethics

I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.

Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.

Love has its own dark morality when rivalry enters in.

Was once lost always lost really true of chastity?

Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.

I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!

Two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society.

And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her she was somehow doing wrong.

What's right week days is right Sundays

Ich finde, wenn Kinder geboren werden, die man nicht haben will, dann sollten sie gleich tot gemacht werden, ehe sie Seelen kriegen, und man sollte sie gar nicht groß werden und herum laufen lassen!

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct.

tal vez me interesara saber por qué... por qué sale el sol lo mismo para el bueno que para el malo

Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she

Yes,' he said; 'and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was just that one thing — a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you did not give me credit for.' The latter words were spoken with a mien and tone of pride.

Hang it, I am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't either.

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

A novel which does moral injury to a dozen imbeciles, and has bracing results upon a thousand intellects of normal vigor, can justify its existence; and probably a novel was never written by the purest-minded author for which there could not be found some moral invalid or other whom it was capable of harming. The Profitable Reading of Fiction 1888

But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by the average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter.

For, as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum;

why the do sun shine on the just and unjust alike?

As without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum.