Quotes About Morality

He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society or fear of oneself.

He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him.

Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled away all the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right or wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realise one's God. Now life interested him more.

He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a very insidious form of prostitution.

It seems to me a wrong and bitter thing to do, to bring a child into this world.

Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.

The gentry were departing to pleasanter places, where they could spend their money without having to see how it was made.

Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.

And voices in me said, if you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured.

was in the grip of his moral, mental being.

O the stale old dogs who pretend to guard the morals of the masses, how smelly they make the great back-yard wetting after everyone that passes.

thing, or who changes his speech or manner according to the appearance or position of the people he meets, is not a man working in the Way.

A person who is influenced by the quality of a thing, or who changes his speech or manner according to the appearance or position of the people he meets, is not a man working in the Way.

As one person always said Good things come to those who wait. You don't have to be connivingly sneaky and passing judgement if one don't use protection, so you can have your fantasies. If you do others right, the lord will bless right judgements and knowledge.

it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.

Nobody kicks a dead dog

Shakespeare said, "Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Lincoln did not belong to any church, and avoided religious discussions even with his best friends. However, he once told Herndon that his religious code was like that of an old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he had heard speak at a church meeting, and who said: "When I do good, I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.

Every one thinks he's a good person, even those on Death Row.

The Boston Transcript once printed this bit of significant doggerel:   Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way— He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he were wrong.   You

Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen!

it is easier to do ill than well in the world.

The most obvious question which this study suggest is: How far in a State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised?

I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.