Quotes About Morality

When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons.

You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery, Enters the devil murder.

What! because we are poor Shall we be vicious?

Sometimes the Devil doth preach.

That execrable sum of all villainies, commonly called the Slave Trade.

Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.

True humility is a kind of self-annihilation; and this is the centre of all virtues.

Good people avoid sin because they love goodness, Wicked people avoid sin because they fear punishment.

Theologians were convinced that slavery belonged to Catholic doctrine. It was manifestly contained, they thought, in the Word of God. "It is certainly a matter of faith that slavery in which a man serves his master as a slave, is altogether lawful. This can be proved from Holy Scripture.

If all the bishops in the world had been asked, two hundred years ago, whether slavery is allowed by God, 95 per cent of them, including the Pope, would have said, 'Yes, slavery is allowed'. Yet in spite of their number, they would all have been wrong.

he had required, to enhance his gratification, that his victim, the partner of his guilt, should be hurled from the pinnacle of unsullied virtue, down to the lowest abyss of infamy and degradation:

To do good in secret, and shun the world's applause, is the surest testimony of a virtuous heart and self-approving conscience.

Ach, wie anständig finden wir uns doch, wenn wir keinen Anlass haben, unanständig zu sein!

È facile considerarsi per bene, quando non si ha alcun motivo per non esserlo. Bisogna innamorarsi, per capire un po' come si è fatti.

And it seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult.

un etica che gli imponeva di offrire al mondo tiranno visi sempre inespressivi, rigidi e spenti.

Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish; And when an angler for his dish, Through gluttony's vile sin, Attempts, the wretch, to pull thee out, God give thee strength, O gentle trout, To pull the rascal in!

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching.

Though I felt uneasy at the thought of writing an instrument of slavery… through weakness I gave way and wrote it; but… said before my master and the Friend that I believed slavekeeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some degree, abated my uneasiness; yet… I should have been clearer if I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against my conscience.

Odd, don't you think? We could drown a litter of kittens that is no sort of threat to us – but these creatures we shall carefully rear.

A world where a man is able to hunt his fellow man! How could he be called a man?

don't know whether that would be the zenith or nadir of decadence