Quotes About Ethics

an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

Out of all the vices, the most difficult is ingratitude.

É possível ofender uma pessoa honrada e uma mulher honrada, mas dizer a um ladrão que é um ladrão é apenas la constatation d'un fait.

in every man, there were two beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for him self which should tend towards the happiness of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest of the world.

They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?' exclaimed Prince Andrei in a shrill, piercing voice.

Stop robbing others before you give money to beggars. With the same hand that we rob one person, we reward another, giving to the poor the money which we have taken from the even poorer. Better no charity than this kind of charity.

The same is true of the rich and the lazy. If they do not work but rely on the labor of others, they cannot be good either, no matter how much they pray or sacrifice.

One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action.

The recognition of the life of every man as sacred is the first and only basis of all ethics.

The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.{1}

Every monarch in the world, except the Emperor of China, wears a military uniform, and bestows the greatest rewards on the man who kills the greatest number of his fellow-creatures.

Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's greatest friend in the regiment.

What is bad? What is Good? What should one love, what hate? Why live and what am I? What is life, what is death? What power rules over everything?

But what's right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by us.

When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I.

Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.

It's just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one's rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.

When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.

Es nek? negribu pier?d?t, vienk?rši- es gribu dz?vot; nedar?t ?auna nevienam citam, iz?emot sevi pašu. Uz to man ir ties?bas, vai ne.?

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;

Pourquoi injuste ? Il ne nous est pas donné de savoir ce qui est juste ou injuste ! L'humanité s'est toujours trompée et se trompera toujours sur ce sujet.

How can one be well when one suffers morally? Is it possible to remain at ease in our time, if one has any feeling?

Este uimitor cât de r?spândit? este iluzia c? frumuse?ea echivaleaz? cu binele.

Animalele par s? ?tie c? progenitura le perpetueaz? specia ?i respect? o anumit? lege în acest sens.Numai omul nu ?tie asta ?i nici nu vrea.Singura lui grij? este s? guste din cât mai multe pl?ceri.