Ethics and Morality

Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion.

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.

Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any.

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.

If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

“Every man has his price.” This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.

Integrity which has been attacked by no temptation can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.

Although tact is a virtue, it is very closely allied to certain vices; the line between tact and hypocrisy is a very narrow one. I think the distinction comes in the motive.

Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

Tact consists in knowing how far to go in going too far.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting.

There is no sin except stupidity.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

We are not punished for our sins, but by them.

One leak will sink a ship: and one sin will destroy a sinner.

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

To sin by silence when we should protest, Makes cowards of men.

There is an eloquent silence: it serves sometimes to approve, sometimes to condemn.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.