Quotes About Ethics

in our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever.

A reflection from this heaven shone upon the bishop. But it was also a luminous transparency, for this heaven was within him: this heaven was his conscience.

The moral world has no greater spectacle than this: a troubled and restless conscience on the verge of committing an evil deed, contemplating the sleep of a good man.

The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.

For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.

Le sens révolutionnaire est un sens moral. Le sentiment du droit, développé, développe le sentiment du devoir. La loi de tous, c'est la liberté, qui finit où commence la liberté d'autrui, selon l'admirable définition de Robespierre.

The just man frowns, but never sneers. We understand anger, not malice.

Sin as little as possible-that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.

A good mayor is a useful person. How can you hold back when you have the chance to do good?

He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more, as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads opened out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming. Which was he to take?

Part 1 A Just Man

No man was created good by God, nor can be made entirely bad by man.

Madame Magloire, retorted the Bishop, you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful. He added after a pause, More so, perhaps.

To be wicked does not insure prosperity.

Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Jean Valjean's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him.

A priest and a philosopher are two different things

Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption. Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men.

vicdan insan?n içindeki tanr?d?r.

Indigestion was designed by God to impose morality on stomachs. Our entire lives explained in one French novel.

Indigestion was designed by God to impose morality on stomachs.

He who has not been a determined accuser during prosperity should hold his peace in adversity.

She took recourse to the expedient of constantly terrified children. She lied.

And whatever he did, he always fell back onto this paradox at the core of his thought. To remain in paradise and become a demon! To re-enter hell and become an angel!

Society absolutely must look into these things since they are its own work.