Quotes About Ethics

Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is right;" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets, your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!' The

No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to? 'Tother world. What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse's? Can a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don't try to go confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it's worthy of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man.

I must bear the consequences as I deserve!

hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy;

Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!

If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked.

Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand." Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that the young are never grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, "Naterally wicious." Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him.

What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.

A bargain,' said the son. 'Here's the rule for bargains -"Do other men, for they would do you." That's the true business precept. All others are counterfeits.

lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, work round to the same.

it's not personal; it's professional: only professional.

Ah Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues.

And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.

Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh

Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted

Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments

The same collection of cut-throats, crooks, and incompetents are still steering our planet's various ships of state.

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.