Quotes About Morality

No humane being... will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and malice, "human" might be the greater insult.

To everyone is given the key to heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.

There is no thief worse than a bad book.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

Conscience keeps more people awake than coffee.

An American will go to hell for a bag of coffee.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple...

Justice is the foundation of courage...

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary & virtuous function.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Enjoy thy stream, then, harmless fish; And, when an angler, for his dish, Through gluttony — vile sin! Attempts, a wretch! to pull thee out, Heaven give the strength, O, gentle trout, TO PULL THE RASCAL IN !

Beauty without virtue is a rose without fragrance.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

...the historian must serve two masters, the past and the present. And while his obligation to the past, his complete, unassailable fidelity to it, must always claim his first loyalty, he must accept the fact that the choices he makes as a historian are not of consequence to him alone, but will affect the moral sense, perhaps the wisdom of his generation.

Those that think it permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.

Whether the succeeding generation is to be more virtuous than their predecessors I cannot say; but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the 1st chapter in the book of wisdom.

Such words he spoke, but they are not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fell continually from his lips.

Man cannot be worked worse than a horse is worked, and be housed and fed as a pig is housed and fed, and at the same time have clean and wholesome ideals and aspirations.

In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person.

It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her - mere money - compared with what she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with which he could part without a pang, while she offered him herself, along with disgrace and shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven.