Quotes About Morality

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature;

At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty;

But why should you regret it more because I am a woman? Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are. But suppose _we_ need that men should be better than we are, said Gwendolen with a little air of check! That is rather a difficulty, said Deronda, smiling. I suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be better for the other to be good.

The devil tempts us not; 'tis we who tempt him, beckoning his skill with opportunity.

just as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy who had stolen turnips. In

Mrs. Glegg had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.

We prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character.

his father was in the law:—most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never being rich.

What is your religion?" said Dorothea. "I mean—not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?" "To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.

The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. -Book 6, chapter 9

it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for them.

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present

The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dullness of our own jokes.

There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read

Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You

Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another

Religion has had the disastrous effect of placing vitally important concepts, such as morality, happiness and love, in a supernatural realm inaccessible to man's mind and knowledge.

When chemistry has told me that nitric acid thrown in a person's face will cause great agony; when physics has told me that throwing a person out of a window will tend to cause broken bones or death; when economics has told me that promising to keep a person in old age will make him idle and improvident, then, and not till then, can ethics step in and forbid me to commit those actions.

We've seen that the major moral divisions in our politics derive from two opposed models of the family: a progressive (nurturant parent) morality and a conservative (strict father) morality. That is no accident, since your family life has a profound effect on how you understand yourself as a person.

The self-righteous person's superfluity of moral credit is the basis of his discourse. He presupposes his own moral values and his own righteousness as a condition of conversation. The effect of this is that anyone talking to a self-righteous person must either agree with his moral values and act equally self-righteous, or face being put in a morally inferior position in the discourse. This is what makes self-righteous people particularly infuriating to talk to. F

In the Strict Father model, it is the duty of the strict father to protect his family above all else. By the Nation As Family metaphor, this implies that the major function of the government is, above all else, to protect the nation. That is why conservatives see the funding of the military as moral, while the funding of social programs is seen as immoral. There