Quotes about Morality

Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.

Men are punished by their sins, not for them.

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.112 They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.

Wicked men obey out of fear; good men, out of love.

Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.

To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.

Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.

Happiness is a thing which calls for honor rather than for praise.