Ethics and Morality

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games; but Vital Economy is the Philosopher Stone.

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally well.

Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts. It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May.

Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.