Quotes About Morality

This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.

He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.

Straight is the line of Duty, Curved is the line of Beauty, Follow the straight line, thou shall see. The curved line ever follow thee.

But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future.

Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit.

I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue," Camille said. "It seems so selfserving.

At first they'd thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale.

You must, of course. Robespierre doesn't lie or cheat or steal, doesn't get drunk, doesn't fornicate—overmuch. He's not a hedonist or a mainchancer or a breaker of promises." Danton grinned. "But what's the use of all this goodness? People don't try to emulate you. Instead they just pull the wool over your eyes.

Henry," the archbishop says, "I have seen you promote within your own court and council persons whose principles and morals will hardly bear scrutiny. I have seen you deify your own will and appetite, to the sorrow and scandal of Christian people. I have been loyal to you, to the point of violation of my own conscience. I have done much for you, but now I have done the last thing I will ever do.

He would have thought God could make his own decisions, but Weston believes the creator may be pushed and coaxed and maybe bribed a little.

Men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?

somehow, everybody is poorer except the priests.

Thomas More says that the imperial troops, for their enjoyment, are roasting live babies on spits. Oh, he would! says Thomas Cromwell. Listen, soldiers don't do that. They're too busy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money.

She is selling herself by the inch. The gentlemen all say you are advising her. She wants a present in cash for every advance above her knee.' 'Not like you, Mary. One push backwards and, good girl, here's your fourpence.' 'Well. You know. If king are doing the pushing." She laughs. "Anne has very long legs. By the time he comes to her secret part he will be bankrupt. The French wars will be cheap, in comparison.

Let us say, his will is convinced, but not his conscience.

Listen, son, this is what I know: right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for. As I'm sure life will instruct you, by and by

It is not the stars that make us, Dr. Butts, it is circumstance and necessità, the choices we make under pressure; our virtues make us, but virtues are not enough, we must deploy our vices at times.

Southwark whores bawling out their prices like butchers selling dead flesh.

Há para tudo uma estação: uma estação para passar fome e uma estação para roubar.

Policy is the servant of reason. It is a sort of blasphemy to make human reason contradict itself and advise in the name of policy what it forbids in the name of morality.

Right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for.

You will see that it is not in your interests to protect the gentlemen who share your sin. Because if the position were reversed, believe me, they would not spare a thought for you.

Here's a bargain. You can take him to a sermon if you don't take him to a brothel.