Ethics and Morality

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled— Law for man, and law for thing.

Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused with ill.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter— Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!

Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

To check the erring, and reprove.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty!

Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.

One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother’s grave?

His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a’ that; But an honest man’s aboon his might, Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that.

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human.

An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange For Deity offended.

I waive the quantum o’ the sin, The hazard of concealing: But, och! it hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feeling!

On ev’ry hand it will allow’d be, He’s just—nae better than he should be.