Quotes to inspire and reflect

“It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself.”

The great secret of morals is love.

Our virtues / Lie in th’ interpretation of the time.

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.

There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Every man has his moral backside too, which he doesn’t expose unnecessarily but keeps covered as long as possible by the trousers of decorum.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.

Morality is largely a matter of geography.

There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.

A man may not transgress the bounds of major morals, but may make errors in minor morals.

If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.

Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain.

The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

Morality, thou deadly bane, / Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain! / Vain is his hope, whose stay an’ trust is / In moral mercy, truth, and justice!

Decalogue, n. A series of commandments, ten in number—just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice.

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one’s stomach the separation from terra—these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known.

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.

The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous—and can shatter the world. And the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight—and that, also, can shatter the world.

Money is only useful when you get rid of it. It is like the odd card in “Old Maid”; the player who is finally left with it has lost.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

Money is the counter that enables life to be lived socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and banknotes are money.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.

Even genius is tied to profit.

Gold is the key, whatever else we try; / And that sweet metal aids the conqueror / In every case, in love as well as war.

Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.

Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it.

Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.

Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache / In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune’s sake.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

With his own money a person can live as he likes—a ruble that’s your own is dearer than a brother.

Help me to money and I’ll help myself to friends.

God makes, and apparel shapes: but it’s money that finishes the man.

Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money.

Money’s the wise man’s religion.

Never ask of money spent / Where the spender thinks it went. / Nobody was ever meant / To remember or invent / What he did with every cent.