Quotes About Morality

Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.

But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.

There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.

Are you afraid of the good you might do?

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.

There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.

Every good quality runs into a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous are not far from the prodigal, the brave man is close to the bully; he who is very pious is slightly sanctimonious; there are just as many vices to virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes.

The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilisation, but it does not yet permeate it.

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.

When a man does wrong, he should do all the wrong he can; it is madness to stop half-way in crime!

Homo homini monstrum

Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls.

A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.

The soul in the darkness sins, but the real sinner is he who caused the darkness.

It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honourable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.