Quotes About Morality

He took a fine fresh fig from his pocket and washed it meticulously in a glass of water; then he peeled it open before our eyes. Inside, the beautiful fig was crawling with maggots. The imam concluded his lesson by saying, 'It's not a question of washing your bodies, but your souls, young men. If you're rotten inside, neither rivers nor oceans will suffice to make you clean.

Le bonheur n'est pas la récompense de la vertu. Il est la vertu elle-même. 

A man who cheats, cheats only himself.

You cannot change what is written in the stars. Lies! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need for trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of virtue. Though there are things beyond our understanding, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness.

Tous les Hommes sont sales d'une manière ou d'une autre. Seulement, il y a ceux qu'un simple verre d'eau suffit à laver, et ceux que tous les océans de la terre ne sauraient purifier.

il ne s'agit pas de laver son corps, mais son âme, jeunes gens. si vous êtes pourris de l'intérieur, ni les fleuves ni les océans ne sauraient vous désinfecter.

And remember this: There's nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, more important than your life. And your life isn't more important than other people's lives.

All men are dirty in one way or another. Only there are those who can be washed by a simple glass of water, and those who could not be purified by all the oceans of the earth.

If forced to choose, Giacometti once said, he would rescue a cat from a burning building before a Rembrandt.

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster , who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce —to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne —who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

What a mistake that had been, to create a construct [AI] that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods.

The enemy takes what isn't his. Jesus gives from what is His. Which are you more like?

It has come to pass', she wrote, in lines that reverberate still, 'that the working class is used, so to speak, as the unit of the moral investigation, until we well nigh believe that this class is the chief repository of the vices and virtues of the nation'.

The law locks up the man or woman/ Who steals the goose from off the common/ But leaves the greater villain loose/ who steals the common from the goose'.

But human nature dictates that there will always be cheaters. That's inevitable. Where there's money involved and glory, there are going to be people that cheat, and there will always be ways to cheat.

Carnegie survived and triumphed in an environment rife with cronyism and corruption. Much of the capital invested in his iron and steel companies was derived from business activities that might be today, but were not at the time, regarded as immoral

The one thing he did die a martyr to was his own conscience. He wanted to do the right thing because it was his idea of the thing to do, and for that—and that alone—he died. This is the satisfaction which you and I will always have.

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy…

If you have to keep something secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!

If you have to keep something a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!

I'm just not going to do it so that we can say that we've done it. And I'm not going to do it if the first thing you say afterwards is 'please don't tell anyone' or 'let's forget it ever happened'. If you have to keep something secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!

If you have to keep something secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.