Quotes About Morality

You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and far more complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.

Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

All Creatures know that some must die That all the rest may take and eat; Sooner or later, all transform Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat. But Man alone seeks Vengefulness, And writes his abstract Laws on stone; For this false Justice he has made, He tortures limb and crushes bone. Is this the image of a god? My tooth for yours, your eye for mine? Oh, if Revenge did move the stars Instead of Love, they would not shine.

Sex is like a drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.

Your friend is intellectually honourable, Jimmy's mother would say. He doesn't lie to himself.

But sins must not be overlooked simply because the sinner is skilled.

If you do bad things for reasons you've been told are good, does it make you a bad person?

Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and can be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

When a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.

that's what Hiltler exemplified: not the triumph of evil but the failure of reason.

Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

you could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I refuse to say this. If it means I will have to forgive Mrs. Smeath or else go to Hell when I die, I'm ready to go. Jesus must have known how hard it is to forgive, that was why he put this in. He was always putting in things that were impossible to do really, such as giving away all your money.

The human moral keyboard is limited, Adam One used to say: there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

How can I teach her some way of being human that won't destroy her?

What good is it to throw yourself in front of a steamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot?

but they mean well, I remind myself. Is that ever a convincing excuse when there's blood on the carpet?

There were signs and I missed them. For instance, Crake said once, Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? You mean, commit euthanasia? said Jimmy. Like putting down your pet turtle? Just tell me, said Crake. I don't know. What kind of love, what kind of pain?

Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit.