Quotes About Values

I wanted to live in a clean, renovated Victorian house full of books, not a rough-hewn, unfinished industrial loft. I wanted to raise bright, good kids, to write bright, good novels in a quiet study, to cook wholesome meals and listen to Bach. He wanted to play loud amplified music, sleep late, drink tequila, and travel. It seemed to me that we didn't want to be the people we'd married each other for.

A great measure of a man is how he reacts to a midnight awakening when there's no fire or burglar in sight.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

Brenda burst in. "Do you know what some people do? They charge something and wear it, and then take it back and say it didn't fit or something. The stores don't give 'em no trouble." Her father turned in a kind of roar. "I never heard such a fool thing in my life. Didn't you hear your mother tell you to shut your mouth, girl!

They decided they were too hooked on money and success, so they bought that old farm and they're going to farm it and think about what's important.

Other men may thrill to the sight of Old Glory rippling in the breeze, but for me the library was a better symbol of what I had taken up arms to defend.

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility.

T is not faces, not color, not appearnces that matter. - Soren

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove . . . . but the world maybe different because I was important in the life of a child.

Since science is without morals, it offers itself as a sanctuary from the dangers of emotional commitment.

What is more, sir, his lordship went on, I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'professionalism.' It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to mean serving the dictates of greed and advantage rather than those of goodness and the desire to see justice prevail in the world. If that is the 'professionalism' you refer to, sir, I don't care much for it and have no wish to acquire it.

Today's world is too foul a place for fine and noble instincts.

I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by "professionalism". It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It means ordering one's priorities according to greed and advantage rather than the desire to see goodness and justice prevail in the world. If that is the "professionalism" you refer to, sir, I don't much care for it and have no wish to acquire it.

But there is no virtue at all in clinging as some do to tradition merely for its own sake.

I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by "professionalism." It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It appears to mean serving the dictates of greed and advantage rather than those of goodness and the desire to see justice prevail in the world. If that is the "professionalism" you refer to, sir, I don't much care for it and have no wish to acquire it.

It is surely a professional responsibility for us all to think deeply about these things so that each of us may better strive towards attaining 'dignity' for ourselves.

I envied it; not the idea of having so much money that you could throw it away, but the thought of growing up in a world where someone cared so much about your happiness and so little about what you accomplished in life.  

Hemingway had a handy dictum. You want to know if something is morally right? Listen to your stomach. If it sits like broken glass, then it's morally wrong.

You're the one who doesn't understand, Lev said. In America, I have my own car. There's more food than you can eat, all the booze I want, all the cigarettes I can smoke. I have five suits! What's the point in having five suits? Grigori said in frustration. It's like having five beds. You can only use one at a time!

After all, if you can't kill a man in front of God's face you probably shouldn't kill him at all.

He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery.

They carried Union Jack flags. Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?

People know the difference between right and wrong—and if they don't, that's what priests are for.

Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery. He