Quotes About Ethics

Now just vengeance is taken only for that which is done unjustly; hence that which provokes anger is always something considered in the light of an injustice.

Moreover, virtue is not concerned with the amount of pleasure experienced by the external sense, as this depends on the disposition of the body; what matters is how much the interior appetite is affected by that pleasure.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.

Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.

It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need

While injustice is the worst of sins, despair is the most dangerous; because when you are in despair you care neither about yourself nor about others.

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.

justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is dissolution.

The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice.

Jerome says (Ep. ad Nepot. lii): "Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being a nobody has become a celebrity.

the intention of every man acting according to virtue is to follow the rule of reason, wherefore the intention of all the virtues is directed to the same end, so that all the virtues are connected together in the right reason of things to be done, viz. prudence,

Now in matters of action the reason directs all things in view of the end:

We should eliminate sin if we wish to eliminate the scourge of tyrants.

So if the ultimate felicity of man does not consist in external things which are called the goods of fortune, nor in the goods of the body, nor in the goods of the soul according to its sensitive part, nor as regards the intellective part according to the activity of the moral virtues, nor according to the intellectual virtues that are concerned with action, that is art and prudence – we are left with the conclusion that the ultimate felicity of man lies the contemplation of truth.

He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man, because in the latter case an injury is inflicted, but not in the former.

The act that anything evil puts forth is due to the strength of goodness, but a deficient goodness. For if there were nothing of good there, neither would there be any being, nor any action: again, if the goodness were not deficient, neither would there be any evil.

Unde omnis lex humanitus posita intantum habet de ratione legis, inquantum a lege naturae derivatur. Si vero in aliquo a lege naturali discordet, iam non erit lex sed legis corruptio.

On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 8): "Love for others comes of love for oneself.

Shepherds of the flock should . . . seek the good of their flock, and every ruler the good of the people subject to him.

The root of liberty is the will as the subject thereof; but it is the reason as its cause. For the will can tend freely towards various objects precisely because the reason can have various perceptions of the good. Hence, philosophers define free-decision as being a free judgment arising from reason, implying that reason is the cause of liberty.