Quotes About Morality

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

Circumstances should never alter principles!

If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)

Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.

But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.