Quotes about Ethics

The ideal man, takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

To feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it, hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

The many, the most vulgar, would seem to conceive the good and happiness as pleasure, and hence they also like the life of gratification. Here they appear completely slavish, since the life they decide on is a life for grazing animals.

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus' phrase', but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder;

And, generally speaking, all things are good which men deliberately choose to do;

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason is the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Freedom is a property of the will which is realized through truth. Freedom is given to man as a task to be accomplished.

For it is about our actions that we deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have a contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity.

But we must not follow those who advise us…being mortal, [to think] of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.

Virtue is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.