Quotes About Morality

Nurse: Yet he is found to be treacherous towards his friends. Tutor: And what man is not? dost thou only now know this, that every one lives himself dearer than his neighbour, some indeed with justice, but others even for the sake of gain.

O Zeus! why hast thou granted unto man clear signs to know the sham in gold, while on man's brow no brand is stamped whereby to gauge the villain's heart?

What man's not guilty? It's taken you a long time to learn That everybody loves himself more than his neighbour.

O Zeus! Why have you given us clear signs to tell True gold from counterfeit; but when we need to know Bad men from good, the flesh bears no revealing mark?

Gone is the trust to be placed in oaths; I cannot understand if the gods you swore by then no longer rule, or men live by new standards of what is right.

O Zeus, perché hai dato ai mortali indizi chiari dell'oro che risulti falso, mentre nel corpo degli uomini non vi è impresso alcun segno con cui riconoscere il malvagio?

There is nothing worse than a bad woman, and nothing better in any way than a good one.

If the gods do a shameful thing, they are not gods.

Verily we must believe the Gods are senseless, if we feel well disposed to murderers.

O child. You are mine, though you do evil.

But I know their disposition and nature; they will rather die; for among virtuous men, disgrace is considered before life.

To live dishonorably is better than to die gloriously.

This has long since been my established opinion, the just man is born for his neighbors; but he who has a mind bent upon gain is both useless to the city and disagreeable to deal with, but best for himself.

yá'ádaat'éhígíí bee hajiidziihgo 'ál'??. A person should only speak words that are good. Saad

I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith.

Ought we to be drunk every night? Sebastian asked one morning. Yes, I think so. I think so too.

It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that is is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included.

There was one thing unforgivable, like things in the schoolroom so bad that only Mommy could deal with, to set up a rival good to God's.

Impotence and sodomy are socially O.K. but birth control is flagrantly middle-class.

A wonderfully congenial group who live by a unique set of social standards. According to their rules, any sin is acceptable provided it is carried off in good taste.

But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable — like things in the schoolroom, so bad they are unpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with — the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's.

There's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There's no moral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or to live to walk ten miles at eighty.

Ch 3: How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candor in the story of early manhood which leaves out of account the homesickness for nursery morality. The regrets and resolutions of amendments, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.

the Yale professor Stanley Milgram's infamous 1961 experiment sought to investigate the extent to which ordinary people would obey the orders of figures in authority to inflict pain on others. On one side of a room divided by a one-way mirror, a scientist ordered a volunteer to deliver electrical shocks of ever-increasing strength to a person strapped to a chair on the other side of the room whenever she or he gave wrong answers to questions read from a questionnaire.