Quotes About Morality

The rector of Manchester invited a local couple, with their daughter, to dinner. The rector's servants seized the daughter, broke two of her ribs, and then deposited her in the rector's bed; he had sex with her that night, but the unfortunate girl died from her injuries a month later.

The purpose of the Vedas was to teach people their dharma

He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore.

Sex makes a man dishonest with himself, as is well known. I feared the slippery ambiguity of false feeling, of expediency, of things not being exactly true.

The biggest evildoers in the world, the ones who do what's not right, are the ones who have all the power, and that's what makes it right. It's right not 'cause you say so, or I say, or even if the Lord on high says so. It's right 'cause them what's got the money and the power, they say it's right, and that makes it right even if it's dead wrong. Dead wrong.

and wherever they chose. The formidable Bill Sikes glowered and menaced and planned robberies. Oliver Twist—to the best of Dodger's knowledge—was lying in a ditch somewhere and might well be dead. And Nancy, that tragic woman whose fundamental goodness of femininity had been diminished and dimmed, but not destroyed, by her life as a slattern whore, was still practicing her trade

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

There is no such thing as a "good man." Good for what? is the question.

Psychological despotism, whether enlightened or not, is gross misuse of psychology. The main purpose of psychology is to acquire insight into, and mastery of, oneself. Not for nothing were what we now call the behavioral sciences originally called the moral sciences and "Know thyself" their main precept. To use psychology to control, dominate, and manipulate others is self-destructive abuse of knowledge. It is also a particularly repugnant form of tyranny.

right conduct can never be established by procedure.

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.

The notion that scientific truth directly fosters moral goodness — a legacy of gifted but in this respect misguided amateurs of science like Diderot and Goethe — was receding in the nineteenth century before positivistic procedures which sharply differentiated facts from values.

Ljudi ovdašnji su u ovom ratu postali onoliko zli koliko to oni nisu. A vi koji ste ovamo došli ste ovim ratom postali baš toliko zli koliko i jeste. Gluvo-slepi – ali, nažalost, ne i nemi, nego naprotiv, baš govorljivi.

Austen is a moralist, but, as John Lauber has put it, she is not a punitive moralist. Sometimes her villains receive no more serious punishment than to achieve their desires. Often that is punishment enough.

If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real.

Socrates: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things." Or, "The best, when corrupted, become the worst." As one of your English poets has said, "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

That's what's so striking about the title of Kushner's book: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. How is that fair? Well, the answer to that is that there are no good people.

The more consciously and freely we choose an evil, the more responsible we are for it and the more guilty we are of it; this is why spiritual sins like pride are greater in guilt than carnal sins.

Hell is not populated mainly by passionate rebels but by nice, bland, indifferent, respectable people who simply never gave a damn.

No one can be saved, and attain eternal joy, without all of the following: (1) a morally honest acceptance of the demands of virtue, (2) a serious effort to practice it, (3) an intellectually honest confession of failure, (4) repentance, and (5) at least an implicit faith and hope in God as Savior.

For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong.

Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good.

Kennedy: You mean it's not a matter of good deeds versus bad deeds, a kind of moral bookkeeping? Lewis: No indeed. Look at the thief on the cross. He made it to paradise even though his life's red ink certainly outweighed the black. Kennedy:

The meaning of life is to become a saint.