Ethics and Morality

Steal! And egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, disfigure them and make ’em pass for their own.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references? Why should you? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Bow down before them. They know what they are doing.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

It isn't right to judge strength as better than good wisdom.

Whoever thinks that he alone has speech, or possesses speech or mind above others, when unfolded such men are seen to be empty.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.

A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.

The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.

Enemies' gifts are no gifts and do no good.

If one begins all deeds well, it is likely that they will end well too.

It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.

To live without evil belongs only to the gods.

Evil counsel travels fast.

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.

There is no greater evil than anarchy.

A soul that is kind and intends justice discovers more than any sophist.

No lie ever reaches old age.

Don't you know that silence supports the accuser's charge?

Whoever thinks his friend more important than his country, I rate him nowhere.

You should not consider a man's age but his acts.

All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.