Moralist Quotes - Page 4

• Some moralist or mythological poet
  Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
  I am satisfied with that,
  Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
  Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Swans, Mirrors

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.177, Wordsworth Editions

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• The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.

  George Orwell

  Blow, Moon, Echoes

  George Orwell (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.

  David Hume

  Pain, Passion, Would Be

  David Hume (2016). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Revision of Great Book”, p.425, VM eBooks

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• Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.

  David Hume

  War, Loss, Luxury

  David Hume (1751). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals”, p.30

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• When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Character, Mean

  "Charles Dickens: A Critical Study". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1906.

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• To amend mankind, moralists should show them man, not as he is, but as he ought to be.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Men, Should, Mankind

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.110

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• Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Fashion, Age, Generations

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• Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the 'superior knowledge' that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.

  Stanislaw Lem

  War, Men, Simple

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “His Master's Voice”, p.121, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Keys, Self

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2006). “Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings Student Edition”, p.134, Cambridge University Press

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• Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible.

  Eric Metaxas

  Mistake, Sacrifice, Zealous

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• The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Heart, Grace, Desperate

  Twitter post from Dec 10, 2014

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• I am a moralist. I worry.

  Toni Morrison

  Worry

  Source: wordmag.com

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• If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to suppose that all previous ages were less sick.

  Louis Kronenberger

  Sick, Age, Ethics

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• The public only knows one side of [Mark Mark Twain] - the amusing part. Little does it suspect that he was a man of strong convictions upon political and social questions and a moralist of no mean order.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Strong, Mean, Men

  Andrew Carnegie (2015). “Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie: Top Biography”, p.184, 谷月社

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• If there is ever an amelioration of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it.

  John Adams

  Important, Regulation, Philosopher

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.117

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• Christians are viewed as being "judgmental, homophobic, moralists" who think they are the only ones going to heaven and who "secretly relish the fact that everyone else is going to hell.

  Andy Stanley

  Christian, Thinking, Heaven

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• [Albert Camus] was viewed by many as an austere moralist, but it was on the football pitch and in the theatre that he learnt his 'morality'. It's something sensed, it won't pass uniquely through thought. It couldn't possibly.

  Catherine Camus

  Football, Theatre, Morality

  Source: www.spikemagazine.com

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• For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue is, Are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they deserve some kind of special moral treatment."

  Richard Dawkins

  Cells, Issues, Suffering

  Source: inters.org

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• [T]he moralists of Europe [have] pretended that beasts have no rights... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Animal, Rights, Europe

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• It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Stars, Moon, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

  Jane Austen

  Reflection, Examination, Evening

  Jane Austen (2013). “Persuasion In Modern English”, p.242, BookCaps Study Guides

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• If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Men, Errors, World

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2016). “Vanity Fair”, p.205, Tyché

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• Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture.

  William Warburton

  Respect, Passion, Mind

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• Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mistake, Character, Past

  Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Penny Dreadfuls: Tales of Horror: Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.719, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society. The greatest playwrights are moralists.

  Yasmina Reza

  Reflection, Mirrors, Theatre

  "Yasmina Reza: 'There's no point in writing theatre if it's not accessible'". Interview with Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2012.

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