Ethics and Morality

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Let us carefully observe those good qualities wherein our enemies excel us; and endeavor to excel them, by avoiding what is faulty, and imitating what is excellent in them.

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

The good is the beautiful.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all. Too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Your silence gives consent.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.