Ethics and Morality

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Be as you wish to seem.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

No intelligent man believes that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds, they are well aware that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly.

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.

We ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household belongings, which when worn with use we throw away.

Courage consists not in hazarding without fear; but being resolutely minded in a just cause.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

Character is simply habit long continued.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

Neither blame or praise yourself.

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.