Quotes About Values

A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.

Teaching our children to live a quiet, sane, and balanced life is one of the most important parental tasks of our day.

Some men would do better to stay poor," Francesca said. " Money only exaggerates their vulgarities.

The death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons. (p. 197)

My wife, she's a good Christian woman, and she supports the death penalty, and believe me, you can't find a better Christian

Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?

It was only in the Western world that old people were viewed with indulgence or contemptuous sympathy. In other cultures, age was respected as the period of enlightened wisdom.

Even a short-lived visit to the bottom level of society means that one is faced with one of the most important decisions one has to make in life: what type of society do you want to help to create? This is the question that has come to dominate my whole life.

It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbor's dead."6

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

We know but few man, a great many coats and breeches.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way...But lo! men have become the tools of their tools...We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.

If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.

There is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.