Quotes About Morality

Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime is to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.

It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

I believe that you are really a very good husband but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

It is strange,' the bird said. 'It is very cold, but I feel quite warm.' 'That is because you have done a good thing,' said the prince.

You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing.

There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is a crime

The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.

I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. there was purification in punishment

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you'll never be invited to a party.

I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.

People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.

We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.

Non vi sono libri morali o libri immorali. Vi sono libri scritti bene e libri scritti male, e nient'altro.

Lord Henry looked serious for some moments, 'It is perfectly monstrous,' he said at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutley and entirely true.