Seneca · On the usefulness of basic principles
Letters 95.43
But when people do this for the purpose of attaining a legacy, they are like vultures waiting for carrion. The same act may be either shameful or honourable: the purpose and the manner make all the difference. Now each of our acts will be honourable if we declare allegiance to honour and judge honour and its results to be the only good that can fall to man’s lot; for other things are only temporarily good.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 95.43, translated by Richard Mott Gummere