Ethics and Morality

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless.

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

Too great haste in paying off an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents.

Most people return small favors, acknowledge middling ones, and repay great ones with ingratitude.

Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay—in solid cash— the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

A noble aim, Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed, In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed.

Humility is often only a feigned submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride.

Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.

You aspire to great things? Begin with little ones. You desire to erect a very high building? Think first of the foundation of humility.

Make your cross your crutch; but when you see another man do it, beware of him.

If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.

Sentimentality is the error of supposing that quarter can be given or taken in moral conflicts.

Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals can be ten times as vicious as one.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves.