Quotes About Ethics

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.

I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.

Thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now (70) I am in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable, to do good sometime

When he is best he is a little worst than a man, and when he is worst he is a little better than a beast.

Commit the oldest sins, the newest kind of ways

But are not some whole that we must make sick?

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows?

Put plainly, there is a natural moral law, existing in reality, i.e., not invented by man, which transcends and trumps our desires. Something is right or wrong, whether we like it or not.

If I lose my honor, I lose myself.

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick, Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part.

Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.

So shines a good deed in a naughty world

Anything that's mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue

We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.

Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.

All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes The cup of their deserving

Why should the private pleasure of some one Become the public plague of many moe? Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe: For one's offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?

I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.

O, had the monster seen those lily hands Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute And make the silken strings delight to kiss them, He would not then have touched them for his life

Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.

If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.