Quotes About Morality

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?

Yo era bueno y cariñoso; el sufrimiento me ha envilecido. Concededme la felicidad, y volveré a ser virtuoso.

it is certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant, and sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a lawyer.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks

It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm.

I supposed there were circumstances in which it was correct, even praiseworthy, for a girl to bash a man's head in with a lamp while he was kissing her...

What a personage says or does reveals a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible in every type of personage, even in a woman. ARISTOTLE: The Art of Poetry. (tr. Ingram Bywater.)

I felt convinced that however it might have been in former times, in the present stage of the world, no man's faculties could be developed, no man's moral principle be enlarged and liberal, without an extensive acquaintance with books.

Monsters, says Mary, are of our own making.

To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

Quién podría estar interesado en el destino de un asesino, sino el verdugo que se iba a ganar el sueldo?

Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature.

to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness;

When one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge.

I could not consent to the death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.

I had resolved in my own mind, that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

There is no feeling more awful than that which invades a weak heart bent upon its ungovernable impulses in contradiction to the dictates of conscience.

Imagine someone saying to God, "I did this evil act just to test You!

But when I heard that this old man, who went from accuser to being the accused, had been staked out on his back in a field and the deputies had piled stone upon stone on his chest, it made me wonder about the kind of people who were convicting us. Where was Satan? Wasn't he hiding in the folds of the judges' coats? Wasn't he speaking in the voices of these magistrates and men of religion?

If that is what this world is, what humans are... There is no future. Understanding and faith... If you take those away, all that's left is fear. I can't accept immoral methods or giving up.