Quotes About Morality

America should function as a Christian nation.

I think my characters are all fairly fundamentally decent, even if they have negative characteristics.

Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man—the man with the right to existence—a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbor's womankind? I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities?

He had a great deal to think of if he was to get the hang of – he was certainly not going to interfere with – the world and having to listen to conversations that were mostly moral apophthegms had tired him. He got too many at too short intervals.

Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories—so gross that they will positively give you a pain. And yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with.

But to betray her with battalion... That is against decency, against Nature...And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here!

God is probably — and very rightly — on the side of the stuffy domesticities. Otherwise

I guess it is vanity that makes most of us keep straight, if we do keep straight, in this world.

How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours? It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye . . .

Indian believes they ain't but two sins... bein a coward... and turnin agin yer own kind.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.

Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme.

Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul.

Hé ! Dieu, se j'eusse étudié Ou temps de ma jeunesse folle, Et à bonnes mÅ"urs dedié, J'eusse maison et couche molle. Mais quoi ? je fuyoië l'école, Comme fait le mauvais enfant. En écrivant cette parole, À peu que le cÅ"ur ne me fend.

That's almost like telling lies," she said. "And lies—well, you see, they are not only wicked—they're vulgar.

Perhaps, she said, to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Look at Robespierre—

And a man who is six feet three in height has six feet and three inches of evil to do battle with, if he has not six feet three of strength and honesty to fight for him.

You can't expect a person to love an animal they might see decapitated at any minute. It ain't realistic, I told Miss Blue, who was gulping down her worm. She looked up at me like it shocked her to learn that some chickens got treated that way.

When wicked or ignorant men govern, it is not surprising that virtue and goodness are not esteemed. For the former hate them, and the latter do not know them.

Guardate quanto gli uomini ingannano loro medesimi: ciascuno reputa brutti e peccati che lui non fa, leggieri quegli che fa; e con questa regola si misura spesso el male e el bene, più che col considerare e gradi e qualità delle cose.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?

Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency?