Ethics and Morality

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

Debasing the moral currency.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Never complain and never explain.

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

Here’s the rule for bargains: ‘Do other men, for they would do you.’

Affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving— HOW NOT TO DO IT.

It was as true … as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.

Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

I would not enter on my list of friends

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.

He prayeth well, who loveth well

If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.