Quotes About Ethics

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Circumstances should never alter principles!

If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)

Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil, cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

It is very wrong to kill any one[.] Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain.

I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

Duty is what one expects from others.

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place

Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Save us from enormities whether open or hidden

le mauvais goût mène au crime (Thaddeus Sholto)

Son las virtudes algo lejano? En cuanto quiero ser virtuoso, inmediatamente estoy alcanzando la virtud

Cuando veas un hombre bueno, trata de imitarle; cuando veas a uno malo, examínate a ti mismo