Ethics and Morality

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.

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

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

Enemies' gifts are no gifts and do no good.

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

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

To live without evil belongs only to the gods.

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

Evil counsel travels fast.

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.

There is no greater evil than anarchy.

No lie ever reaches old age.

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

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

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

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.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.