Quotes About Ethics

Don't steal sweet rolls.

If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.

The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.

If you get a hard word from any one, keep silent, and his own conscience will accuse him.

Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position.

Este incredibil cât de complet? este iluzia care ne face s? credem c? frumuse?ea este în genere bun?tate.

Do not be interested in the quantity of people who respect and admire you, but in their quality. If bad people dislike you, so much the better. —LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. Our attitude towards the fearful necessity of war ought to be stern. It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war and not a game. Otherwise, war is a favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous...

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences. The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop you from understanding the basic rules of life.

One might murder and steal and yet be happy

If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars," he said.

And yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature.

the role of the disappointed lover of a maiden or of any single woman might be ridiculous; but the role of a man who was pursuing a married woman, and who made it the purpose of his life at all cost to draw her into adultery, was one which had in it something beautiful and dignified and could never be ridiculous….

We are all brothers, and yet I live by receiving a salary for arraigning, judging and punishing a thief or a prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole consumption of my life.

Never to the end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.

But what can I do?' - I answer those who speak thus. - '... must I therefore not point out the evil which I clearly, unquestionably see?

Ružan ?in možeš da ne ponoviš i možeš da se pokaješ zbog njega, ali ružne misli ra?aju isklju?ivo ružne ?ini. Ružan ?in samo utire put ružnim ?inima, a ružne misli nezadrživo vuku tim putem.

I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.

É possível salvar uma pessoa que não quer perder-se; mas se toda a natureza está assim corrompida, pervertida, que a própria perdição lhe parece a salvação, o que fazer? (Aleksei Aleksándrovitch)

Mento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?

He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at his cousin. "But

Yes, man is much worse than the animal when he does not live like a man.

But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.