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Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

It might be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently is nothing short of criminal.

According to this way of arguing, there will be no true principles in the world; for there are none but what may be wrested and perverted to serve bad purposes, either through the weakness or wickedness of men.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.