Quotes About Morality

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth—the virtues or the malevolence.

I'm with the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on this point, when he observes: "If the art legitimates cruelty, I think the art is not worth having.

I did believe that my behavior made me unusual – because it didn't seem to match the behavior of other women – but I didn't believe that it made me bad.

Los ingredientes de la oscuridad y los de la luz están presentes en todos nosotros y depende del individuo (o de la familia, de la sociedad) decidir qué va a potenciar: sus virtudes o su malevolencia. La locura de este planeta procede, en gran parte, de la incapacidad humana para alcanzar un equilibrio personal virtuoso. La demencia (colectiva e individual) es la consecuencia.

Here is what I do know, however: sins of the flesh will not get you punished in the afterlife. They will only get you punished in this life. As you've now learned.

Still, it was a sad state of the world that people judged others not by the best that they could be but by the worst thought in their own hearts.

Women were something best bought, he'd found. Pay them, f*ck them, and send them away in the morning. That way avoided tears, recriminations, and feminine disappointment. Oh, and small things like being slapped across the face. Mick rubbed his jaw. But Silence wasn't one of his whores, as Harry had pointed out. Mick couldn't send her away. And he couldn't let her starve herself—he wouldn't let anyone hurt her, including herself.

I am a whore, she said. And in addition to that, I am not a nice woman. But despite these facts, my word is gold.

It was the sad state of the world that people judged others not by the best that they could be but by the worst thought in their own hearts

I've never violated any woman." "Have you killed?" He paused at that, before reaching into the wardrobe to move aside her spare day gown. "Once or twice. The men deserved it, I assure you.

What of all the men who made her what she is by associating with her?" she asked. "No one worries about the reputation of the men who patronize whores." "I can't believe you would speak of such things," he sputtered in outrage.

Val's upper lip curled as he wondered if Mrs. Crumb knew the meaning of the word fun . Most likely she dismissed it as something vaguely shameful and leading to sin - which, at the best of times, it was .

Was it possible yet to be poor and live decently? Were young men still sent to die in wars made by old men?

History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is.

If my conscience had been a person at that moment, I might have strangled him.

I am no more guilty than the so-called God-fearing, according to the tales John brings of those lying with others' wives, beating their children and placing pebbles instead of coins in the collection plate. Yet they condemn us. If this is what it is to be church folk I would rather be cast out.

Those who follow evil gods become evil themselves

It's possible to like bad people, but liking them doesn't make them good.

Cats cannot be held accountable for their actions, because they have no morals to speak of.

Did Appomattox signify the triumph of right over wrong or of might over right?

In the eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin. Beds too, if they had to be mentioned, were approached with caution; and a decent reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same breath.

I'm sure it's wrong to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy

No lady she had had to do with had ever had such a thing on her dressing-table. Powder was different, because one needed powder sometimes for other things besides one's face, and also one powdered babies, and they, poor lambs, couldn't be suspected of wanting to appear different from what God had made them. But a lip-stick! Red stuff. What actresses put on, and those who were no better than they should be. Her mistress and a lip-stick—what would Miss Virginia say?

Virginia had, however, long felt that her mother was not truly religious—not truly and seriously, as she and Stephen were. No doubt she thought she was, and perhaps she was, in some queer way; but were queer ways of being religious permissible? Weren't they as bad, really, as no ways at all?