Moral Quotes - Page 38

• The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

  E. B. White

  Kindness, Feelings, Rodents

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.170, Cornell University Press

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• I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

  Confucius

  Character, Men, Appearance

  Confucius (1950). “The Best of Confucius”

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• If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the universe, and so winning peace of heart whatever obstacles we meet.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Winning, Self

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• Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, Revenge, Men

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.115, Beacon Press

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• Sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, " I cannot say that i have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be heard in dutch clocks. Not," said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, " That I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Winter, Giving

  Charles Dickens “Hard Times”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Grateful, Adversity, Hatred

  "Love in the Time of Cholera". Book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1985.

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• Darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower. Of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. Light in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, moral hope. As the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, "Who? Who?"

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Night, Light

  "Gravity's Rainbow". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1973.

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• You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)

  Amy Tan

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Amy Tan (2012). “Saving Fish From Drowning”, p.15, HarperCollins UK

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• The moral of Snow White is never eat apples.

  Daniel Handler

  White, Apples, Snow

  "The Miserable Mill". Book by Daniel Handler, 2000.

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• The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Atheist

  "Letters from the Earth" (1940)

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• And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

  Winston Churchill

  Recovery, Years, Cups

  Winston Churchill (1986). “The Gathering Storm”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Adversity, Rights, Self

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• Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Believe, School

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• Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty

  Albert Einstein

  Spiritual, Struggle, Catholic

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• But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reading, Eye, Night

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “An Experiment in Criticism”, p.141, Cambridge University Press

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• And why should he interest himself at all in my moral and intellectual capacities: what is it to him what I think and feel?' I asked myself. And my heart throbbed in answer to the question.

  Anne Bronte

  Heart, Thinking, Intellectual

  Anne Bronte (2012). “Agnes Grey”, p.101, Courier Corporation

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• If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Thinking, People, Frustrated

  Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.14, Vintage

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• Humans are so Funny. So much moralising about words while at the same time thinking it perfectly "moral" to pepper-bomb cities full of people to protect them from violence." David Icke - Remember Who You Are

  David Icke

  Thinking, Cities, People

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• Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.

  Michael Sandel

  Needs, Want, Limits

  Michael J. Sandel (2009). “Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?”, p.265, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Morals aren't just for when it's easy, Anita. They aren't morals if you throw them aside every time it's convenient.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Easy, Convenient, Ifs

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2012). “Kiss the Dead: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.73, Penguin

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• It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

  Alain de Botton

  Good Life, Taken, Ideas

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• Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.

  Steven Pinker

  Average, Principles, Groups

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.449, Penguin

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• Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Voice, Perspective

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.47, Penguin

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• There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

  Chinua Achebe

  Thinking, Allies, Obligation

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

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• They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Pyramids, Pyramid Schemes, Church

  Barbara Kingsolver (2012). “Flight Behaviour”, p.21, Faber & Faber

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