Quotes About Ethics

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.

It is excellent To have a giant's strength But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant

They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad

Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own read.

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strenght, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

All is fair in love and war

O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the Devil!

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire.

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.

This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs.

Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale? (Twelfth Night)

To do a great right do a little wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will.

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?

The world is grown so bad that wrens make pray where eagles dare not perch

I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.

Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. - Angelo, Act 2 Scene 1

An overflow of good converts to bad.

I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.

Men must learn now with pity to dispense; For policy sits above conscience.

Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition