Quotes About Morality

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule.

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel.

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

It is not often the worst trait that occasions the loudest outcry. Men complain of their suffering and not of the crime.

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature

laws of moral nature answer to those of matter as face

Transcendentalists have been accused of being rebels and rule-breakers. But if they disregard society's customs and laws, it's because they're listening to conscience and obeying the Law Maker within. There are situations where virtue asks us to break the rules.

Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. Samuel Johnson The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. Ralph Waldo Emerson

If peace is to be maintained, it must be by brave men, who have come up to the same height as the hero, namely, the will to carry their life in their hand, and stake it at any instant for their principle, but who have gone one step beyond the hero, and will not seek another man's life.

The Fugitive Slave Law 1851–54

Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.

whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed.

Si la maldad y la vanidad usan el abrigo de la filantropía, ¿debería yo callar?

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point of view. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously.

It has been said, that "common souls pay with what they do; nobler souls with that which they are.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Nature, as we know her, is no saint…. She comes eating and drinking and sinning.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.