Quotes About Ethics

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

A rapacious and licentious soldiery.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.

It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery.

We have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory they have no power over the substance of original justice.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.

Only ideals are dangerous.

I find it worth while to help clean up the mess made by malevolence and folly. But I do try not to like the mess for its own sake.

It encourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnation; it throws altogether out of gear the healthy movement of the conscience; it invents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sins which are no sins at all, but which darken the heaven of innocent joy with futile clouds of remorse.