Quotes about Morality

Remorse is annoyance at yourself for having passed up something that's to your benefit. But if it's to your benefit it must be good—something a truly good person would be concerned about. But no truly good person would feel remorse at passing up pleasure. So it cannot be to your benefit, or good.

The highest good was the virtuous life. Virtue alone is happiness, and vice is unhappiness.

But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it's right, or benefits others—nothing else. Not because it's more appealing or more popular.

Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad.

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.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just. Then they will not care how devout you have been. But will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods then you will be gone but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of the loves ones.

If it is not right do not do it, if it is not true do not say it.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.

The aim of a ship's captain is a successful voyage; a doctor's, health; a general's, victory. So the aim of our ideal statesman is the citizens' happy life--that is, a life secure in wealth, rich in resources, abundant in renown, and honorable in its moral character. That is the task which I wish him to accomplish--the greatest and best that any man can have.

Honesty is the best policy

There is no people so brutish or barbarous that they do not know that they must believe in a god, even if they do not know precisely what god they should worship.

As for you, my young friends, I urge you to strive for virtue, for without it friendship cannot exist. And friendship, aside from virtue, is the greatest thing we can find in life.