Quotes About Morality

You can run down a demi-god only by making him out to be a demi-devil.  These

It cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time done an indescribable amount of evil. She had endeavoured to do good, failing partly by ignorance and partly from the effects of an unbridled, ambitious temper.

A man in the right relies easily on his rectitude and therefore goes about unarmed.

The fact is, he never was wrong. He couldn't go wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God, — and a man who does both will never go far astray. I don't think he ever coveted aught in his life, — except a new case for his violoncello and somebody to listen to him when he played it.

Henrietta had been taught by the conduct of both father and mother that every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and especially from a daughter.

Tutti i più ridicoli fantasticatori che nei loro nascondigli di geni incompresi fanno scoperte strabilianti e definitive, si precipitano su ogni movimento nuovo persuasi di poter spacciare le loro fanfaluche. D'altronde ogni collasso porta con sé disordine intellettuale e morale. Bisogna creare uomini sobri, pazienti, che non disperino dinanzi ai peggiori orrori e non si esaltino a ogni sciocchezza. Pessimismo dell'intelligenza, ottimismo della volontà.

i montanari, moralmente più puri, sono fisicamente più robusti e «triplicano» le consonanti, la gente di pianura (guai poi se sta al livello del mare come i veneziani) invece, oltre che moralmente depravata, è anche fisicamente degenerata e «scempia» le consonanti.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

Frontline soldiers are advancing day and night under fire, with pure and saintly hearts. The rear echelon men who follow along behind are raping, drinking and looting.

All too often guilt was a matter of timing. Y. S., who ran away when her village was bombed, was sentenced to six months' labour camp 'for deserting her place of work', while A. S., who refused to leave her home when the Germans were approaching, was condemned in absentia as a 'traitor to the Motherland'. A minimum of ten years in a Gulag labour camp awaited her.

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral

Cease, daughter! said the priest at last in a trembling voice. I cannot grant absolution, no priest could...

They're all examples of self-betrayal — times when I had a sense of something I should do for others but didn't do it.

Character is who you are when nobody else is watching," he wrote in one of his books—the undeniable, hokey truth.

That is what we do each time we see someone who falls in love with evil strategies, until we hurl him into misery, so he may learn to fear the Gods.

I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.

The Law is Reason free from Passion.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there's too much corruption in the world

Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.