The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Regard to reputation has a less active influence when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

the greater the number of owners, the less the respect for common property. People are much more careful of their personal possessions than of those owned communally; they exercise care over common property only in so far as they are personally affected.

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else. Here, therefore, is the one area where weakness is a disqualification by itself rather than a limitation on performance capacity and strength.

How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself

We all look with distaste on people who arrogantly pretend to a reputation to which they are not entitled; but equally to be condemned are those who, through lack of moral fibre, fail to live up to the reputation which is theirs already.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

Too much respect for other people's wisdom will make you depreciate your own.

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust, than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.

You never know what forms self-respect will take, especially with people whose rules of life are few.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.

Contempt

The contempt I feel for others — for myself different, less internal than guilt.

It’s not that I think (or have ever thought) I was bad — through and through. I think I’m unattractive, unloveable, because I’m incomplete. It’s not what I am that’s wrong, it’s that I’m not more (responsive, alive, generous, considerate, original, sensitive, brave etc.).

My profoundest experience is of indifference, rather than censure.

"Respect for individual human personality has with us reached its lowest point," observed one intellectual in 1921, "and it is delightfully ironical that no nation is so constantly talking about personality as we are. We actually have schools for 'self-expression' and 'self-development,' although we seem usually to mean the expression and development of a successful real estate agent."