Ethics and Morality

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give our thought to the body.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

It is much easier to be a hero than a gentleman.

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.

Seek not every quality in one individual.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Reason deceives us; conscience, never.

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.

The great tragedies of history occur not when right confronts wrong but when two rights confront each other.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.