Ethics and Morality

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

He who would do good to another, must do it in minute particulars.

The strongest poison ever known

A truth that’s told with bad intent

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

The question is not, Can they reason? nor,

All punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,

Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius! … You took the trouble to be born, but no more.

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set a house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

I knew one that when he wrote a letter he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a bymatter.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.

Audi partem alteram.

Dilige et quod vis fac.

You command continence; give what you command, and command what you will.