Quotes About Morality

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will.

He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.

If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

Lying as a way of life is a dangerous game", the Pole went on. "And not just because you risk the vengeance of the NKVD. You risk the integrity, the coherence, of your own soul.

A myth is 'a narrative involving supernatural or fancied persons embodying popular ideas or social phenomena.' Women love telling stories . . . the girl-group is a gigantic narrative full of morality tales locked up like charms in a crystallized sound.

perché si de' punir donna o biasmare che con uno o più d'uno abbia commesso quel che l'uom fa con quante n'ha appetito e lodato ne va, non che impunito? Sono fatti in questa legge disuguale Veramente alle donne espressi torti

Faith left to itself … exalts itself above the laws of natural morality. … [B]y so much higher are duties to God than duties towards man[.]

Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God, that which … especially in the Christian religion … has … pre-eminence … is moral perfection. But God as a morally perfect being is nothing else than the realised idea, … the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being; … how could he otherwise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before him, and make him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?

The conception of the morally perfect being is no merely theoretical, inert conception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imitation, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; for while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells me to my face, without any flattery, what I am not. … [R]eligion renders this disunion all the more painful … [I]t sets man's own nature before him as a separate being.

Religion … denies goodness as a quality of human nature; man is wicked, corrupt, incapable of good; … on the other hand, God is only good[.]

Recommend virtue to your children it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.