Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Everything's got a moral, if you can only find it.
Goethe Johann von 1749-1832
There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.
Goldsmith Sir James 1933-1997
The custom is that if you divorce you abandon your wife. That is pure moral turpitude. I do not agree with it and I never have. For me, marriage is having children, not a piece of paper.
Kant Immanuel 1724-1804
Critique of Practical Reason
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.
Proust Marcel 1871-1922
A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Man and Superman
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
Thoreau Henry David 1817-1862
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Wilde Oscar 1854-1900
The Picture of Dorian Gray
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written.
Ayer A. J. 1910-1989
Language, Truth and Logic
We offer the theist the same comfort as we gave to the moralist. His assertions cannot possibly be valid, but they cannot be invalid either.... It is only when the theist claims that in asserting the existence of a transcendent god he is expressing a genuine proposition that we are entitled to disagree with him.
Russell Bertrand 1872-1970
The Conquest of Happiness
Boredom is ... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Adams Henry Brooks 1838-1918
The Education of Henry Adams
Morality is a private and costly luxury.
Bolt Robert 1924-1995
A Man for All Seasons
Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture.A complicated gesture learned from books.
Kennedy John F. 1917-1963
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle that the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must -
in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all morality.
Lawrence D.H. 1885-1930
Phoenix
Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.
Macaulay Baron (Thomas Babington) 1800-1859
Essay ... ‘Moore's - Life of Lord Byron'
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
Mencken H.L. 1880-1956
The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
Nietzsche Friedrich 1844-1900
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Nietzsche Friedrich 1844-1900
Jenseits von Gut und Böse
Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral.
Master-morality and slave-morality.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
The Dunciad
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expres.
Russell Bertrand 1872-1970
Sceptical Essays
We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and the other which we practice but seldom preach.
Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
Morality is not respectability.
Spencer Herbert 1820-1903
Essays ‘Prison Ethics'
Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.
Thoreau Henry David 1817-1862
What is morality but immemorial custom?
Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
Whitehead Alfred North 1861-1947
Dialogues
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.