Seneca the Younger Quotes

It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.

Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

Hypocrisy is bad, but it's not the worst vice in the world. If I declared “murder is wrong” and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites ' particularly in Hollywood ' believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.

Demand not that I am the equal of the greatest, only that I am better than the wicked.

There is no more ethical group on this planet than ourselves.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.

Strength and strength's will are the supreme ethic. All else are dreams from hospital beds, the sly, crawling goodness of sneaking souls.