Quotes about Ethics

Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church.  More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat; more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give thanks, without even waiting to rob the body.

A Christian mother's first duty is to soil her child's mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together.

I said it was a brutal thing. No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it.

To be good is noble. To tell other people how to be good is even nobler and much less trouble.

I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.

The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable- -it is smouched [Milton] from the New Testament and no credit given.

After much reflection—suppose it was a lie? What then? Was it such a great matter? Aren't we always acting lies? Then why not tell them?

By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a noble animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward--you will never get her full confidence again.

Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

Do right and you will be conspicuous.

No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations.