Quotes About Ethics

With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could

Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men in these things!

Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.

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 the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference only to the future. He

though his morals had hardly been applauded, disapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile.

looking-glasses for the pretty, and lying books for the wicked.

È senza dubbio una disgrazia per un uomo che deve procurarsi da vivere, nascere con una natura realmente nobile. Un animo elevato condurrà un uomo all'ospizio di mendicità.

There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.

When you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn't the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn't you feel so bad because killing him felt so good? Think about it, but don't worry about it. Why shouldn't it feel good? It must feel good to God—He does it all the time, and are we not made in His image?

Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out?

Killing somebody, even if you have to do it, it feels that bad?' 'Willy, it's one of the ugliest things in the world.

How do you behave when you know the conventional honors are dross? When you have come to believe with Marcus Aurelius that the opinion of future generations will be worth no more than the opinion of the current one? Is it possible to behave well then? Desirable to behave well then?

Flog no one else with meat.

Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and the vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us. What still slaps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?

No existe misericordia en la Máquina verde; nosotros la creamos, fabricándola en las partes que han superado nuestro elemental cerebro de reptil. No existe el crimen, nosotros lo hemos creado y solo a nosotros nos incumbe.

NOW THAT ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and the vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us.

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous.

It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is injustice to none of them.

Fact be virtuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth

The Conscience is a thousand witnesses.

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.