Marvin J. Ashton Quotes

There is no real excellence in all of this world which can be separated from right living.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

A clean and sensitive conscience, a steady and scrupulous integrity in small things as well as large, is the most valuable of all possessions, to a nation as to an individual.

A good moral character is the first essential. It is highly important not only to be learned but to be virtuous.

Integrity means that if our private life were suddenly exposed, we'd have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Integrity means that our outward life is consistent with our inner convictions.

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

Attend well to your character, and your reputation will look out for itself.

Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.

Conduct is the grand test of character. Words are one great evidence of the condition of the heart.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

I have long served virtue, And never ta'en wages of her.

Integrity means always doing what is right and good, regardless of the immediate consequences.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.

Honesty is nothin' compared to decency.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

The true gentleman does not preach what he practices till he has practiced what he preaches.

Concepts of integrity and heroism and honor are still important to the world today. Some people behave well, and some people behave badly.

If I have one wish which is greater than another, it is, if I had the power, to make men do right; to make them stop their swearing, their lying, their deceiving, to stop trying to injure the innocent, and begin to be honest and upright in all their dealings with one another and honor the name of the Deity.

The last degree of honesty has always been, and is still considered incompatible with statesmanship. To hunger and thirst after righteousness has been naturally, as it were, supposed a disqualification for affairs.

I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.

In all this world there is no substitute for personal integrity. It includes honor. It includes performance. It includes keeping one's word. It includes doing what is right regardless of the circumstances

Avoid dishonest gain: no price can recompence the pangs of vice.

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be, all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.

There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.