Quotes About Morality

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn't about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn't about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others - even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me.

There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.

So? Bob said. Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved. Bob, I said. You can't just go around killing people. I know. That's why you should do it. No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.

Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others-- even when there's not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.

But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.

Something like this will test you like nothing else, Mac said. You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross. He took my empty glass away and said, You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.

Because even if they are doing something immoral, I'd be an idiot to start criticizing them for it if I wasn't perfect myself. Smoking is self-destructive. Drinking is self-destructive. Losing your temper and yelling at people is wrong. Lying is wrong. Cheating is wrong. Stealing is wrong. But people do that stuff all the time. Soon as I figure out how to be a perfect human being, then I'm qualified to go lecture other people about how they live their lives.

He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.

It's one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.

The real battle for your own soul isn't about falling from a great height; it's about descending, or not, one choice at a time.

You wouldn't be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn't care. So? Monsters don't care, Michael said. The damned don't care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.

Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.

But you can't go around changing your definition of right and wrong (or smart and stupid) just because doing the wrong thing happens to be really convenient. Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.

People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so.

Harry, life isn't simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you're in the thick of things, sometimes it's hard for us to tell. You didn't do what you did for your own benefit. You did it so that you could protect others. That doesn't make it right - but it doesn't make you a monster, either. You still have free will. You still get to choose what you will do and what you will be and what you will become.

It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.

I hate what you represent. ... Power without conviction. Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

It isn't about being fair and equal. It's about the difference between right and wrong. He stared out at the bloody Elinarch. And this was wrong.

Dismembering monsters with a chain saw is one thing. People are another." "Yeah. People are easier." "Bob," I growled. "They're people.

The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.