Quotes about Ethics

The soul in the darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness.

Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.

any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honourable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.

Il y a des gens qui paieraient pour se vendre

Succeed; that is the advice that falls, drop by drop, from the overhanging fruit of corruption.

The judge speaks in the name of justice,' he said. 'The priest speaks in the name of pity, which is only a higher form of justice.' (Bishop Myriel)

There are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.

In days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in order to live, I will not steal a name.

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

Was there a voice that whispered in his ear that he had just passed the most solemn moment of his destiny, that there was no longer a middle course for him; that from now on, he would either be the best of men or he would be the worst of men; that he now had to rise higher, so to speak, than the bishop or fall even lower than the galley slave; that if he wanted to be good, he had to be an angel; that if he wanted to stay bad, he had to be a monster from hell?

We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against... Death belongs to God alone.

For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.