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Morality Quotes
"Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world may at any time be superseded and decease."
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"If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence."
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"Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?"
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"I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen."
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"The more kindness and justice are challenged, the more we must embrace them. Only when you are challenged - and only when you challenge yourself - do you discover what truly matters."
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"Fear nothing but your conscience."
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"The primary goal of a righteous parent who has a daughter is to minimize the number of boys and men for whom their daughter will have willingly opened her legs come her wedding day; the closer to zero, the more righteous they will seem."
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"To esteem what makes you holy over what makes you happy - that is the greatest dare."
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"There is no need to corrupt people's morals. Their morals have been corrupting them for years."
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"Conscience does make cowards of us all."
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"To the grim poor there need be no pourquoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her--is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil...?"
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"Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness."
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"But the line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern."
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"The line between moral behavior and narcissistic self-righteousness is thin and difficult to discern. The man who stands before a crowd and proclaims his intention to save the seas is convinced that he is superior to a man who merely picks up his own and other people's litter on the beach, when in fact the latter is in some small way sure to make the world a better place, while the former is likely to be a monster of vanity whose crusade will lead to unintended destruction."
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"Virtue is imaginative, evil repetitive."
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"He runs his eye along the row of knives in their racks, the cleavers for splitting bones. He picks one up, looks at its edge, decides it needs sharpening and says, "Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion?"A silence. After a while, Thurston proffers, "At this moment, master, I would have to say..."
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"Every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral."
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"Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There'll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It's a reversion to constant, visceral fear."
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"We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent."
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"A man is an angel that has become deranged, Joe Fernwright thought. Once they " all of them " had been genuine angels, and at that time they had had a choice between good and evil, so it was easy, easy being an angel. And then something happened. Something went wrong or broke down or failed. And they had become faced with the necessity of choosing not good or evil but the lesser of two evils, and so that had unhinged them and now each was a man."
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"The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you."
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"The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear."
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"Humility cannot be taught by propaganda, though slavery can. Shouting for humility is a form of arrogance. One of my most abiding recollections is of a priest at a religious occasion once roaring, in the most threatening way imaginable: 'O our Lord God, we most humbly pray!'Real humility is not always the same as apparent humility. Remember that fighting against self-conceit is still fighting: and that it will tend to suppress it temporarily. It does not cure anything.Remember, too, that humility itself does not bring an automatic reward: it is a means to an end. It enables a person to operate in a certain manner."
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"What would Jesus do? One thing is obvious, if there is one thing Jesus would NOT do - is to behave like his followers."
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"This was not a man who wanted to give up his mate. This was a man trying to do the honorable thing-and give her a choice, no matter hiw much it cost him."
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"SAYING OF SHEIKH ZIAUDIN:Self-justification is worse than the original offence."
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"Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving."
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"For example, your man might think: I don't steal. Maybe on my taxes, everyone does that, but not in the way I heard so and so stole from his company. See? Those men for whose opinion he cares approve of embezzlement in one area, not the other. He uses them to maintain a claim on goodness while at the same time stealing."
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"Let us think about our attitude of compassion and understanding with which we choose to respond to what is happening around us."
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"An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind."
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"In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin."
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"They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."
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