Quotes About Morality

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.15

Life-the way it really is-is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

Happiness does not consist in self-love.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

M]an cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short … there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.

Divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.

Refuse to honour the genius who has abused his gifts.

None of us are either all good or all bad – we're all somewhere in between – but there comes a moment in each life when we take an important step, either toward the light or toward the dark…

I realized Mam was right. It was nothing to do with prophecy. You could see it in Alice's eyes. She'd always be somewhere in between, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. But wasn't that true of all of us? Not one of us was perfect.

Whatever it cost, I had to do what was right. Better oblivion. Better to be nothing than live to experience that.

I also have a code of honor, but it is flexible.

When the good die, it sometimes unshackles evil that would otherwise have been kept in check!

A child can learn what is right as easy as what is wrong and whatever impressions are made on the mind when it is plastic will remain there.

The New York Herald reported that a German soldier had been seen carrying a bagful of ears. Another newspaper accused Germany of melting down the enemy dead to manufacture soap.

Okay, okay," I said. I should have known better than to talk comic books with Gabe. "What I'm trying to tell you is, the right thing isn't always the easy thing." "Do I get a cookie with that fortune?" "You might want to watch the way you talk to your elders," I said sternly. "Yeah, right," he said, and he smiled, and I smiled, too.

probity of your actions should anyone try to put you in a compromising position.