Quotes About Ethics

decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin. In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the living nor to the dead.

Great ladies, my child, are great just because they can do their duty on every occasion, and do it nobly." "But what is it about?" asked Clotilde as white as a lily. "Matters too serious to be discussed with you, my dearest," the Duchess replied. "For if they are untrue, your mind would be unnecessarily sullied; and if they are true, you must never know them.

People without religion are capable of anything.

You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A pretty slate of things it is!

Conscience, my dear fellow, is a stick which every one takes up to beat his neighbor and not for application to his own back.

Corruption is powerful in the world: talent is scarce. So corruption is the instrument of swarming mediocrity, and you will feel its point everywhere. You will see wives whose husbands have six thousand francs a year, all told, spend more than ten thousand on a dress. You will see officials with a salary of twelve hundred francs buy estates.

One point, however, I may insist on; all trickery, all deception, is certain to be discovered and to result in doing harm; whereas every situation presents less danger if a man plants himself firmly on his own truthfulness.

Le malheur est une espèce de talisman dont la vertu consiste à corroborer notre constitution primitive : il augmente la défiance et la méchanceté chez certains hommes, comme il accroît la bonté de ceux qui ont un cœur excellent.

Journalism may say or suppose anything, and our dignity forbids us even to reply.

Customs are reflection of the people and the law is reflection of country's reason.

Noble natures cannot dwell in this world,

Everything can be excused and justified in an age which has transformed vice into virtue and virtue into vice.

Some hunt heiresses, others a legacy; some fish for souls, yet others sell their clients, bound hand and foot. Every one who comes back from the chase with his game-bag well filled meets with a warm welcome in good society.

Sharpe had owned forty-three enslaved Black folks, but had caught religion during a sermon by a Great Awakening minister. After hearing the sermon, Edward Sharpe had decided he was against slavery. But instead of freeing the Black folks he owned and giving them a plot of land to work, he'd sold them for a profit, and bought land and started a university with the proceeds.

Increase the number of honest women and diminish the number of celibates, as much as you choose, you will always find that the result will be a larger number of gallant adventurers than of honest women.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

A bad conscience makes a very good ghost.

I have never paid for fornication, and I don't intend to begin with you. When you come to me, and come to me you shall, you shall do so of your own accord and wholly free of all commerce and custom.

A good and faithful judge prefers what is right to what is expedient.

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

To save a man's life against his will is the same as killing him.

Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, by any means money.

Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.