Quotes About Morality

I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else.

it don't make no diference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow.

You can't pray a lie--I found that out.

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.

The preacher who casts a vote for conscience' sake, runs the risk of starving.

It is said, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace.

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.

I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.

You can't pray a lie.

A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, "Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud." "I have a better idea," suggested Twain. "Why don't you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?

No brute ever does a cruel thing—that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense.

The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.

I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is characteristic of me I ran him out of the front door in his night-shirt at the point of a shotgun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if I ever have another grandfather.

Do right for your own sake, and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it--when unpopular.

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. - More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. -