As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819]

I have gained this by philosophy … I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our concepts, of which morality is the foremost one, but because if we do not do this (which, if we did, would be a crude circle in explanation), the concept of his will that is left over to us, the attributes of the desire for glory and domination, bound up with frightful representations of power and vengeance, would have to make a foundation for a system of morals that is directly opposed to morality.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.