Ethics and Morality

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it’s a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their colour.

Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l’infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.

God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Common sense is not so common.

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

[Men] use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another to hear.

No one would remember the Good

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

A child should always say what’s true,

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict Socrates.

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.

Virtue does not come from money, but from virtue comes money and all other good things to man, both to the individual and to the state.

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.

I never was attached to that great sect,

‘Do you know what a pessimist is?’ ‘A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.’

I’m one of the undeserving poor … up agen middle-class morality all the time … What is middle-class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.