Morality Quotes - Page 15

• The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Giving, Support, Quality

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1902). “History of Woman Suffrage ...: 1883-1900”

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• Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.

  Jane Rule

  Choices, Novelists, Plot

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

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• Tallulah [Bankhead] was the foremost naughty girl of her era but, in those days, "naughty" meant piquant, whereas values have so changed that now, in the 1970s, it generally means nauseating.

  Anita Loos

  Girl, Mean, Naughty

  Anita Loos (1974). “Kiss Hollywood good-by”, Viking Adult

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• ... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

  Mary McCarthy

  Average, Catholic, Religion

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• Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

  Samuel Richardson

  Ignorance, Pride, Religion

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• Those commands of superiors which are contrary to our first duties are not to be obeyed.

  Samuel Richardson

  Firsts, Obedience, Duty

  Samuel Richardson (1980). “A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments: a facsimile reproduction”, Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint

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• A man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is beautiful: it strikes at first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things, so also is there analogous to it a beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eye perceiveth the one, so the mind doth by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty, is ever quickest and purest in the noblest minds.

  George Berkeley

  Beauty, Beautiful, Eye

  George Berkeley (1752). “Alciphron: Or, The Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion Against Those who are Called Free-thinkers”, p.112

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• All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.

  George Berkeley

  Writing, Mean, Men

  George Berkeley (1871). “The applied philosophical works”, p.16

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• The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, andobedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.

  David Hume

  Heart, Men, Order

  David Hume, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1998). “Dialogues and Natural History of Religion”, p.122, Oxford University Press, USA

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• If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign tous: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?

  David Hume

  Beauty, Reflection, Mind

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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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• The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.

  David Hume

  Vices, Virtue, Habit

  David Hume, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord “Moral Philosophy”, Hackett Publishing

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• All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.

  David Hume

  Lying, Mind, Quality

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Money, Believe, Gold

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• In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality.

  Naomi Klein

  People, Climate, World

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• Mr. Doctor, that loose gown becomes you so well I wonder your notions should be so narrow.

  Elizabeth I

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Doctors

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• Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord.

  Stefan Zweig

  Faith, Dream, Peace

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• The world has always needed human beings who refuse to believe that history is nothing but a dull, monstrous selfrepetition, a selfperpetuating, meaningless game, only varied in outer garb, who cannot be converted from their conviction that history signifies progress in morality, that our race is ascending on an invisible ladder from an animal nature towards divinity, from brutal violence to the wisely ordering intellect, and that the ultimate stage of complete understanding is already close at hand, indeed has almost been attained.

  Stefan Zweig

  Believe, Animal, Hands

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• Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men havethe same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable.

  Angelina Grimke

  Men, Rights, Perfect

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• I prize the purity of his character as highly as I do that of hers. As a moral being, whatever it is morally wrong for her to do,it is morally wrong for him to do. The fallacious doctrine of male and female virtues has well nigh ruined all that is morally great and lovely in his character: he has been quite as deep a sufferer by it as woman, though mostly in different respects and by other processes.

  Angelina Grimke

  Character, Lovely, Males

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• When human beings are regarded as moral beings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon the summit, administering upon rights and responsibilities, sinks into insignificance and nothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live.

  Angelina Grimke

  Sex, Responsibility, Men

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• Beauty satisfies the senses completely and at the same time uplifts the soul. That which gratifies the senses is pleasant, and that which uplifts the soul without being sensual in the least is good, true, right, anything you like, but not beautiful.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Beauty, Beautiful, Uplifting

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• Morality, a muzzle for the will; logic, a climbing iron for the mind.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Climbing, Iron, Mind

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• Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock asnot going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch's greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Running, Accomplishment, Priorities

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• What's the meaning of all the pious clamor, condemning cocks and hens? Those who have no teeth are the greatest meat-haters.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Hypocrisy, Hens, Meat

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