Ethics and Morality

The time is always right to do what is right.

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

Say not you know a man entirely till you have divided an inheritance with him.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts on principle.

He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.

Modesty is to merit what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.

Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

Wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man could ever err, and therefore, he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.

Wisdom alone is the true and unalloyed coin for which we ought to exchange all things, for this and with this everything is bought and sold Fortitude, temperance, and justice; in a word, true virtue subsists with wisdom.

Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?

What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

When I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure: and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such a one I deem to be the true musician, having in himself a fairer harmony than that of the lyre.

When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge? Is not that the inference?

When you admonish a wrongdoer, do so gently, that it may not lead to hostility.

When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.

What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it.

Wealth, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.