Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Morals are private. Decency is public.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

In some ways, 'decency' is a hazy concept; we know it when we see it.

This world is always working against a sense of honor, cleanliness, integrity.

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

I consider myself to be very correct and proper: an upright citizen.

If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.

I cannot tolerate immorality.

I shall produce nothing that will offend the proprieties, whether applied to children or grownups. My pictures are turned out with clean hands and, therefore, with a clear conscience which, like virtue, is its own reward.

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

The real ornament of woman is her character, her purity.

I'm actually a very moral guy.

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

All my life I have been taught to take the high road and never to dignify salacious or false accusations and I have been taught never, never to lie.

Though I be poor, I'm honest.