Quotes About Morality

If it comes to be a question of soul-saving, Mr. Bunce, I shan't save my place at the expense of my conscience." "Not if you knows it, you mean. But the worst of it is that a man gets so thick into the mud that he don't know whether he's dirty or clean. You'll have to wote as you're told, and of course you'll think it's right enough. Ain't you been among Parliament gents long enough to know that that's the way it goes?

You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to men an women upon the earth

If one wants to keep one's self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other.  I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam.

The author now leaves him in the hands of his readers: not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man, without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn.

As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil.

Ah, you think that anything naked must be indecent; even truth.

A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get.

I like everything old-fashioned, said Eleanor; old-fashioned things are so much the honestest.

To give him his due, he did not know that he was a villain.

That is an opinion on which very much may be said on either side. It is strange how widely the world is divided on a subject which so nearly concerns us all, and which is so close beneath our eyes. Some think that we are quickly progressing towards perfection, while others imagine that virtue is disappearing from the earth.

What follows as a natural consequence? Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them. Then there comes the jealousy that others should be growing rich with the approval of all the world, — and the natural aptitude to do what all the world approves. It seems to me that the existence of a Melmotte is not compatible with a wholesome state of things in general.

is true that one must put up with wrong, with a great deal of wrong. But no one need put up with wrong that he can remedy.

never so solemn a hermit; but a bright face, a true trusting heart, a strong arm, and an humble mind, might do much in teaching those around him that men may be gay and yet not profligate, that women may be devout and yet not dead to the world.

I do not believe in a woman marrying a bad man in the hope of making him good." "Especially not when the woman is naturally inclined to evil herself.

A certain class of dishonesty … has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable.

It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.

It is no doubt very wrong to long after a naughty thing. But nevertheless, we all do so. One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam's fall. When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things

it makes me feel that an honest man should not place himself where he may have to deal with such persons." "According to that the honest men are to desert their country in order that the dishonest men may have everything their own way.

After all," said he, "money is a fine thing." "Very fine, when it is well come by," she answered; "that is, without detriment to the heart or soul.

I dare say, and as it doesn't displease me all is well. You, however, have quite sense enough to understand, that in this house more is thought of—of—of— he would have said blood, but that he did not wish to hurt her,—more is thought of personal good conduct than of rings and jewels.

At any rate, it is as easy to do that as to tell of the man who is one hour good and the next bad, who aspires greatly but fails in practice, who sees the higher but too often follows the lower course.

But he was a man who could not make his reason subordinate to his feelings. If the evidence against his friend was strong enough to send his friend for trial, how should he dare to discredit the evidence because the man was his friend?

A clergyman, — and such a clergyman too!" "I don't see that that has anything to do with it." And as he now spoke, John did take his eyes off his book. "Why should not a clergyman turn thief as well as anybody else? You girls always seem to forget that clergymen are only men after all.

Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them.