"Moral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ministerial bill attempts to throw in the way of bequests to the Catholic Bishops as such, will be easily evaded; these Bishops will exercise every function of the Episcopate whether this Bill shall pass or fail: and their moral power will be greatly increased by its passage. But the Ministry, which has found the general support of the Catholics, and especially of the Irish Catholic Members, very opportune at certain critical junctures, will henceforth miss that support—in fact, it has already ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of Russia to fight against me, his countryman, with the power of his tongue, as my other countryman with the arms of the Swedes. Well, I think it will not do the allies much good to unite with traitors and apostates, and to look for assistance against me from them. I gain more moral weight by this struggle against traitors than my enemies by their support. Bernadotte's treason ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... so am I—not on the moral side, nor is it the moral aspect that troubles Lula Dickinson. She thinks it's the moral aspect, but it's really the revolutionary aspect, the menace to those precious institutions from which we derive ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... His thumb was white where he had chalked it to make a better bridge for the cue. His face was white; for he had chalked it with dissipation. His physical body was whitened—chalked—a whited sepulchre; his moral nature likewise chalked. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... stones in every-day life which might be stepped over with perfect ease, but which, curiously enough, are considered from all sides and then tripped upon; and the result is a stubbing of the moral toes, and a consequent irritation of the nervous system. Or, if semi-occasionally one of these stones is stepped over as a matter of course, the danger is that attention is immediately called to the action by admiring friends, ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... such a scene, the suddenness and violence with which the events succeed each other, and the tumultuous and uncontrollable mental agitation to which they give rise, deprive a man who is called to act in it of all sense and reason, and exonerate him, almost as much, from moral responsibility for what he does, as if he were insane. At any rate, Hasdrubal, after shutting up his wife and children with a furious gang of desperadoes who could not possibly surrender, surrendered himself, perhaps hoping that he might ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Vedas and Upanishadas, worshipped by the celestials acquainted with histories and Puranas, well-versed in all that occurred in ancient kalpas (cycles), conversant with Nyaya (logic) and the truth of moral science, possessing a complete knowledge of the six Angas (viz., pronunciation, grammar, prosody, explanation of basic terms, description of religious rites, and astronomy). He was a perfect master in reconciling contradictory texts and differentiating in applying general ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was once more his own master. He had sold his time to Junkins. He would not pilfer the hours it would take to ride twenty miles and back again, even to see Billy Louise; which proves that he was no moral weakling, whatever else ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... a great surprise to the reader to learn that these savages are exceedingly moral. Infidelity between man and wife is punished with death, but in all my travels I only heard of one such case. A man marries only one wife, and although any expression of love between them is never seen, they yet seem ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... emotional nature which shows itself by a discord or an indecorum, and leads to a cynicism or indecency which offends the reason through the taste. What is called immorality does not indeed always imply such defects. Sound moral intuitions may be opposed to the narrow code prevalent at the time; or a protest against puritanical or ascetic perversions of the standard may hurry the poet into attacks upon true principles. And, again, the keen sensibility which makes ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... that is aggressive, as being a part of that society. In this they are wrong. No one estimates the grandeur of the ocean by the rubbish thrown up on the shore. Fashionable society, good society, the best society, is composed of the very best people, the most polished and accomplished, religious, moral, and charitable. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... end of the eighteenth century there was in Vienna a singular individual named Emmanuel Schikaneder, a Jack-of-all-trades so far as public amusements were concerned—musician, singer, actor, playwright, and manager. There can be no doubt but that he was a sad scalawag and ribald rogue, with as few moral scruples as ever burdened a purveyor of popular amusements. But he had some personal traits which endeared him to Mozart, and a degree of intellectuality which won him a fairly respectable place among the writers for the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in her secret heart and conscience she mistook her moral situation, as my unlearned readers have done perhaps. Though not acquainted with the nice distinctions of the contemporary law, she knew that betrothal was a marriage contract, and could no more be legally broken on either side than any other compact written ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... all the world of that young gentleman. It was just because he thought so much of him he was beginning to feel that it was high time to put a stop to something that was going on. But, it was a delicate matter; a woman was the matter; and he hadn't the moral courage to go at it the straightforward way. He "whip sawed" again. Thrumming on the desk with his lean, bony ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest intellectual and moral forces that the world has yet seen, but it is hard to arrive at any certain opinion as to the details of his character and abilities, for in the later accounts he is deified and in the Pitakas though veneration has not gone so far as this, he is ecclesiasticized and the human side is neglected. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... beyond the need of proof, and beyond doubt—as a writer has said: "The idea of Reincarnation has become so firmly fixed and rooted in the Hindu mind as a part of belief that it amounts to the dignity and force of a moral conviction." No matter what may be the theories regarding the nature of the universe—the character of the soul—or the conception concerning Deity or the Supreme Being—you will always find the differing sects, schools, and ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... isn't a animal here that hasn't a beautiful moral, but you mustn't fondle 'em. You ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... population there was of course much loosening of the bands, social, political, moral, and religious, which knit a society together. A great many of the restraints of their old life were thrown off, and there was much social adjustment and readjustment before their relations to one another under the new conditions became definitely settled. But there ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... well as souls, is the evil side, and commits crimes so atrocious, that the miserable doctor is well-nigh driven to despair. It is a powerful subject, powerfully treated, and contains in its small compass more moral teaching than a hundred sermons. It has, particularly in America, been used by many clergymen as the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... an excellent minister, or a friend to the soundest principles of civil and religious liberty, so no man whatever can avoid considering his incessant deviations from the great duties of an historian as a moral blemish on his character. He dares very frequently to say what is not true, and what he must have known to be otherwise; he does not dare to say what is true, and it is almost an aggravation of this reproach, that ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... me to push home a great moral lesson, and I done my best. But what's the use? Next mornin' I takes up the paper and reads how Candy ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... builders, sculptors, and people, was now between the upper and nether millstones of fate, being ground into the fine dust which has served for centuries as the principal ingredient in the manufacture of an endless succession of moral puddings and pies, known in modern times as ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... a miserable condition, and have great difficulty in persuading myself that it must go on like this, and that it would not really be more moral to put an end to this disgraceful kind of life. Solitude and disconsolate loneliness from morning till night—such are the days that follow each other and make up life. To cure my sick brain the doctor has prevailed upon me to give up taking snuff altogether; for the last six days I have ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... by the sternest compulsion, to take an interest in the earth as the earth. She must study every department of its history—its animal history; its vegetable history; its mineral history; its social history; its moral history; its political history; its scientific history; its literary history; its musical history; its artistical history; above all, its metaphysical history. She must begin with the Chinese dynasty and end with Japan. But first of all she must study geology, and especially the history of the extinct ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... clergyman, preaching honesty and moral conduct, and living fairly well up to his preaching, too, as far as he himself was concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and the mountains ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... creating a fearful heritage for their descendants by intermarrying with the native women. From these marriages have sprung the race which now occupies, in vast numbers, a large portion of that magnificent territory, and who, by their low moral condition, their ignorance, and instability of character, have been the chief cause of the melancholy wars which have so long saturated its plains with blood. The Jesuits, by the missions they formed in various parts of the country, introduced a superficial ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgotten ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the Transvaal. I will not declare that every Boer is a saint, or that every one is a model of cleanliness or virtue, but I make bold to say that the majority of the Boers are not a fraction less moral, cleanly, or virtuous than the majority of Americans or Englishmen, albeit they may be less progressive and less handsome in appearance than we imagine ourselves ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... not consent to this. In answer to these offers, she was wont to declare in somewhat mysterious language, that any misery coming upon herself was a matter of moment to nobody,—hardly even to herself, as she was quite prepared to encounter moral and social death without delay, if not an absolute physical demise; as to which latter alternative, she seemed to think that even that might not be so far distant as some people chose to believe. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... before. There were others who at last saw a chance to make a fresh start and grasped thankfully at it. A few were 'corner-boys,' learning in discipline and comradeship a lesson they had never dreamed of. I think there was everywhere in the new army a certain moral uplift arising from the consciousness of a hard duty undertaken, and it was not difficult to lead this on to a more personal and spiritual crisis. There was something very lovable about them. A tall, handsome ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... after, when Denison returned to Sydney from the South Seas with more money "than was good for his moral welfare," as his sister-in-law remarked, he sought out the old cobbler gentleman and bought back his locomotor ataxy bean for as many sovereigns as he had been given ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... respectfully, but when the holy friar proceeded by analogy to imply that the moral superiority of the heathen Romans was proportionally grand, he resisted stoutly. "Has then the world lost by Christ His coming?" said he; but blushed, for he ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... nede, Whan that the lustes ben aweie: Forthi to thee nys bot o weie, In which let reson be thi guide; For he may sone himself misguide, 2920 That seth noght the peril tofore. Mi Sone, be wel war therfore, And kep the sentence of my lore And tarie thou mi Court nomore, Bot go ther vertu moral duelleth, Wher ben thi bokes, as men telleth, Whiche of long time thou hast write. For this I do thee wel to wite, If thou thin hele wolt pourchace, Thou miht noght make suite and chace, 2930 Wher that the game is nought pernable; It were a thing unresonable, A man to ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... works illuminated the genius of Parmegiano, the energetic movements of whose graceful figures have never been equalled, nor are they deficient in the moral influence of the art. His Moses breaking the tables in a church at Parma, and his picture of the vision of St. Gierolimo, now in England, are filled with the impress of his intellectual powers, and stand ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... to time he ought to find heavy. He does not deserve a worse punishment. To-day, in the seventy-third year of my life, my only desire is to live in peace and to be far from any person who might imagine that he has rights over my moral liberty, for it is impossible that any kind of tyranny should not coincide with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the moral of Paris, and I had nearly lost my life yesterday by tearing a placard written in support of it. I did it imprudently, not supposing I was observed; and had not some people, known as Jacobins, come up and interfered in my behalf, the consequence might have been fatal.—It would be difficult, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... substance;" or that it suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion "pawing to get free his hinder parts." I permit myself to doubt whether even the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage—physical, intellectual, and moral—would have been equal to this feat. No doubt the sudden concurrence of half-a-ton of inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros is conceivable, and therefore may be possible. But does such an event lie sufficiently within the bounds of probability to justify the belief in its occurrence on the ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... fifty episodes, two sermons, and a number of moral digressions, have been omitted from ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of subjects, as much as from the community of studies, opinions and sentences; seeing that the peril of contracting vices and illusions is greater, according to the number of persons with whom one is allied. In the public shows, said the moral philosopher, by means of pleasure, vices are more easily engendered. If one aspires to the supreme splendour, let him retire as much as he can, from union and support, into himself (Di sorte che non sia ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the constant subjects of study, pursued with that zeal and earnestness which can only arise from the feeling of a sacred obligation, combined with the impulse of an ardent patriotism. Within their walls were deposited copies of their religious, moral, and civil institutions; which it was their duty not only to preserve, but to multiply. They kept, besides, the genealogies of the tribes; in which they marked the lineage of every family who could trace their descent ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... exemplary in his social relations. He was no reader, and never had been in the way to gain theological knowledge; he sincerely believed all that was in the Prayer Book, but his sermons were very rarely doctrinal. They were sensible, manly discourses on the moral duties. He administered Holy Communion at the three great festivals, saw his Bishop once or twice a year, was on good terms with the country gentlemen in his neighbourhood, was charitable to the poor, hospitable in his housekeeping, and was a staunch though not a violent supporter of the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... between Miss Anthony and Mr. Bonney, Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Henrotin. The last named asked her to take part in the Temperance, the Labor and the Social and Moral Reform Congresses and requested her advice and assistance. She was placed by Mr. Bonney on the advisory council of the Political, Social and Economic Congresses. Mrs. Palmer wrote: "I should like you to send us special suggestions for speakers and topics." Miss Anthony was much pleased ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... hamlet in Maine or California, the same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute nature. It would be hard to put more mental and moral philosophy than the Persians have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... could not get his dear desire. Philippa's sense of justice was inflamed, as well as her moral sense. What! you eat a cake, and then, instead of sitting down to your plain bread and butter—away you flounce, and get ready to eat another cake! That's dead against the proverb, that's monstrous, that's offensive. "Mamma, mamma," Philippa had protested, "you can never have her back to flourish ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... its grand course among the nations a change occurred in the minds and practices of the people of a majority of the States. The love of liberty, because of its own great self, and not because of its application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive character and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears stuffed with cotton. When these things ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... antiquity Whose meaning I could never clearly see. Kind reader, draw the moral if you're able: I give you here the naked fable. Fame having bruited that a great commander, A son of Jove, a certain Alexander, Resolved to leave nought free on this our ball, Had to his footstool gravely summon'd all Men, quadrupeds, and nullipeds, together With ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... managed it so well. The little tract is written with singular spirit and rapidity of style. It is clear, trenchant, and direct to a fault. It is indeed far less critical than polemical, and shows no trace of lofty calm, either moral or intellectual. We are not repelled much by his eagerness to refute and maltreat his opponent. That was not alien from the usages of the time, and Warburton at least had no right to complain of such a style of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... gratitude of which he was the object; triumph in the sense of successful conspiracy against a man who had rated the offer of his protection at five pounds; regret at the lost opportunity of effecting a fine stroke of moral agriculture, which his dread of involving himself in coming consequences had forced him to let slip—all these varied emotions agitated the captain's mind; all strove together to find their way to the surface through the outlets of his ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to singing French chansons of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses, and fixing my eyes on him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... destruction. A long day under the pines resulted not in inspiration, but in an uninspiring cold in his head; his temper suffered together with his nose, and Eulaly Sykes, below stairs, chafed her hands together at the sounds of musical and moral discord which floated down upon her ears. All the morning long, he smote his brows and his piano by turns. The new motif he was seeking, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... woman only as a chattel, and that ostracized or defamed every wife who, reverencing her womanhood, protested against its excesses. For five years past—ever since her marriage—her husband's career had been one long, unending dissipation. At last, broken down by a life he had not the moral courage to resist, he had succumbed and taken to his bed; thence, wavering between life and death, like a burnt-out candle flickering in its socket, he had been ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: the air common to men who live on the vices, the follies, or the baser fears of mankind; the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses; to private detectives and inquiry agents; to drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers of invigorating electric belts and to the inventors of patent medicines. But of that last ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... displaying a spirit of restless selfishness, eager emulation, and craftiness." He thought the softness, earnestness, and repose of European woodland scenery were far more pleasing, and that these formed one of the causes of the superior moral character of European nations. Live and let live is certainly not the maxim taught in these tropical forests, and it is equally clear that selfishness is not wanting among the people. Here, in view of so much competition among organized beings, is the spot to study Darwin's "Origin ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him—this weird, silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remote regions of space, and vast stretches of past and future within the circle of his interests. It is this simultaneous softening in the insistence of desire and enlargement of its scope that is the chief moral end of education. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... ordinary standard of womanhood to which Emma belonged. She began to half believe the truth of what she had once with great astonishment heard Anne Valery declare—ay, even Anne Valery—that if the noblest moral type of man and of woman were each placed side by side, the man would be the greater ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... unpleasing lady whom he had once met at a lawn-tennis party? Indeed it would not be too much to say that if anyone had given him the opportunity he would have welcomed a chance to quarrel, especially with the lady of the local Institute. Thus, cured of all moral distempers, and every tendency to speculate on feminine charms, hidden or overt, did he descend ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the history of war) began with a naval operation on the sixteenth of April, when Porter ran past the Vicksburg batteries by night. Though Porter had the four-knot current in his favor he needed all his skill and moral courage to take a regular flotilla round the elongated U made by the Mississippi at Vicksburg, with such a bend as to keep vessels under more or less distant fire for five miles, and under much closer fire for nearly nine. At the bend the vessels could be caught end-on. For nearly five miles ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... once too often in his speculations, and his magnificent fortune will go with a crash, and the family will return to their former state, or perhaps sink lower, for there are very few men who have the moral courage to try to rise again after such a fall, and this man is not one ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that's how things are? Very good, Mr. Tertius. No, I shan't use physical force. But mind I don't use a little moral force—a slight modicum of that would be enough for you, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... conducted themselves accordingly. He made no protest, but observed that their convictions as to how they should behave in his presence had corollaries in the shape of very definite convictions as to how he should carry himself before them. He thought that such people might be described as moral trainers. They do not profess virtue themselves, but they take a real pleasure in keeping you up to ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... whatever might happen, to assume the care of the child who was entitled to call him its father. What he would do for the mother must depend upon her future conduct. This was another instance how every trespass of the bounds of the moral order which the Church ordains and hallows entails the most sorrowful consequences even here below. Precisely because he was so strongly attached to this unfortunate woman, once so richly gifted, he desired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Greeks—the plan of ostracising. Girls have copied and cheated in examinations ever since examinations were known, and I suppose they will do so as long as examinations are held. There are always a few whose bump of moral responsibility isn't developed. I agree with one of the previous speakers this far—let those half-dozen who desire to cheat, cheat. Let it be nothing to us. But I would add this much more—let them be also nothing to us. Let us ostracise them ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid. When the Americas had enough black laborers for their immediate demand, the moral action of the eighteenth century had a chance to make ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... picture of our condition under a Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal rights. To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition of men upon earth. From evil—physical, moral, and political—it is not our claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions among ourselves—dissensions ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... bitterness to Mrs. Mumpson's defeat, she took the chair to her rival's favorite rocking place, lighted her pipe, and sat down in grim complacency. Mrs. Mumpson warily approached to recover a support which, from long habit, had become moral as well as physical, and her indignation knew no bounds when she saw it creaking under the weight of her foe. It must be admitted, however, that her ire was not so great that she did not retain the "better part of valor," for she stepped ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... seldom exercise them now, because it exhausts me too severely to do so. Once there were several of us Court Godmothers, but I am the only one left, and my health is so poor that I can do little for my God-children but give them moral teaching and wise counsel. However, such good offices as I can still render shall ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... reason, and therefore they would not have existed at all. Nothing would have been but God and literature. Possibly a responsible creation like ours might have been formed, nevertheless, by making each letter a living, thinking, moral agent; and the alphabet might thus have written out the Divine ideas, as men now work them out. If the conception seem to any one chilly, if it have a dreary look, if it appear to leave only a frosty metallic base, instead of the grand oceanic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the camp at Lobau a dog which I think all the army knew by the name of corps-de-garde. He was old, emaciated, and ugly; but his moral qualities caused his exterior defects to be quickly lost sight of. He was sometimes called the brave dog of the Empire; since he had received a bayonet stroke at Marengo, and had a paw broken by a gun at Austerlitz, being at that time attached to a regiment ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which are urged against the Pentateuch on moral grounds rest partly on misapprehension, and are partly of such a character that, when rightly considered, they turn against the objectors themselves. This will be illustrated ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the matter, Yasha?" Platonida Ivanovna said to him. "Thou seemest to be tousled to-day, somehow."... In the old woman's peculiar language this quite accurately defined Aratoff's moral condition. He could not work, but even he himself did not know what he wanted. Now he was expecting Kupfer again (he suspected that it was precisely from Kupfer that Clara had obtained his address ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... reference has been made to the lingering religious element in the Interludes. Probably 'moral element' would describe it better, though in those days religion and morality were perhaps less separable than they are to-day. In the midst of so much comical wickedness and naughty wit, with a ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... since I came back from Australia, have I been on the point of clearing myself of the secret. But, you see, there was Verner's Pride in the way. You would naturally have said upon hearing it, 'Give the place up to me; you can have no moral right to it.' And I was not prepared to give it up; it seemed too comfortable a nest, just at first, after the knocking about over yonder. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... plain, straightforward manner, Mr. Edward Stratemeyer endeavors to show his boy readers what persistency, honesty, and willingness to work have accomplished for his young hero, and his moral is evident. Mr. Stratemeyer is very earnest and sincere in his portraiture of young character beginning to shape itself to weather against the future. A book of this sort is calculated to interest boys, to feed their ambition with hope, and to indicate ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... The moral character and influence of these men permeated the first contingent, with the result that never since the days of Cromwell's New Army did the Empire possess a more athletic, courageous or God-fearing army than the First Canadian Contingent. The work of carving ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... if it is? I'm sure there is no harm in the book. You looked exactly like Aunt Barbara when you said that; I mean, all but her cap and spectacles. 'The moral expression' of your face, as she would say, was exactly ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... been taken out of his own county and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His own friends who had been there at hand ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... to be considered. Nevertheless, payment for the bride is always made to her parents in the form of grain, money, horses, saddles, blankets, or cattle. The bride's consent is necessary, custom requiring the young man to prove his moral strength, and ability to support a wife and himself, by erecting a neat house and permitting the girl of his choice to occupy it with him for four nights without being molested or having her presence observed. By ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the name given to a world-wide institution of the nature of a friendly benevolent society, having for its objects the promotion of social intercourse amongst its members, and, in its own language, "the practice of moral and social virtue," the exercise of charity being particularly commended. By a peculiar grip of the hand and certain passwords members are enabled to recognise each other, and the existence of masonic lodges in all countries enables the freemason to find friendly intercourse and assistance wherever ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... eloquence of Burke, beyond that of all other orators and statesmen which Great Britain has produced, is featured with expressions, and characterised by qualities, as peculiar as they are immortal. So far as invention, imagination, moral fervour, and metaphorical richness of illustration, combined with that intense "pathos and ethos," which the Roman critic describes ("Huc igitur incumbat orator: hoc opus ejus, hic labor est; sine quo caetera ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Greene, so with Nash, an opinion on his moral conduct and general deportment has been too readily formed from the assertions of his opponents; and because Gabriel Harvey, to answer a particular purpose, states, "You may be in one prison to-day and in another to-morrow," it has been taken for granted, that "after his arrival in London, he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... pictures. Add, if you like, the selfish luxury of helping poverty and wretchedness, and hearing my conscience tell me what an excellent man I am. I can't do all this on five hundred a year—but I can do it on forty times five hundred a year. Moral: ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Socialism spoke at first in the name of Christian sentiment and morality: men profoundly imbued with the moral principles of Christianity—principles which it possesses in common with all other religions—came forward and said—"A Christian has no right to exploit his brethren!" But the ruling classes laughed in their faces with ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... exposed at once. A lawyer cannot afford to lie and be mean. And besides, I have observed that there is really no healthy, manly development of intellect, without a healthy, manly development of the moral nature." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the Democrats to power in Congress came one of those great moral struggles which convulses a nation with an agitation only surpassed by a physical contest between hostile armies. The approach of the Presidential contest added to the acerbity of the debates, although some of the participants evidently adopted ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Captain Nemo concluded that picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still separating us from open water—and he decided to crush this layer. The man had kept his energy and composure. He had subdued physical pain with moral strength. He could still think, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and the title of the volume in hand, which consists of notes of a voyage to the tropics, and a sojourn in Cuba during the last winter. The endeavor has been to present a comprehensive view of the island, past and present, and to depict the political and moral darkness which have so long enshrouded it. A view of its interesting inhabitants, with a glance at its beautiful flora and vegetation generally, has been a source of such hearty enjoyment to the author that he desires to share the pleasure with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... practical application? The answer is very simple. Jesus was the revealing of God—God manifest in the flesh. He had come into this world not merely to heal a few sick people, to bring back joy to a few darkened homes by the restoring of their dead, to formulate a system of moral and ethical teachings, to start a wave of kindliness and a ministry of mercy and love; he had come to save a lost world, to lift men up out of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... (q.v.), of which the principal house, at Vadstena, was richly endowed by King Magnus II. and his queen. About 1350 she went to Rome, partly to obtain from the pope the authorization of the new order, partly in pursuance of her self-imposed mission to elevate the moral tone of the age. It was not till 1370 that Pope Urban V. confirmed the rule of her order; but meanwhile Bridget had made herself universally beloved in Rome by her kindness and good works. Save for occasional pilgrimages, including one to Jerusalem ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... those fellows," exclaimed Lord Claymore, as he walked the deck, looking towards the enemy with a greedy eye. "We must get them out somehow or other, if we can. It would have a grand moral effect to carry off a prize from ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... even that of a deputy, even of one elected by themselves, is suspected by them; hence their choice of a new president every fortnight.—They submit to no constraint or control, neither to the legal authority of a parliamentary code, nor to the moral authority of parliamentary chiefs. They are without any such; they are not organized in parties; neither on one side nor on the other is a recognized leader found who fixes the time, arranges the debate, draws up the motion, assigns parts, and gives the rein to or restrains his supporters. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the magnitude of the social change hereby involved, and the consequent differences in the moral relations between individuals, have not as yet been thought of,—much less estimated,—by any of your writers on commercial subjects; and it is because I do not yet feel able to grapple with them that I have left ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... you committed a murder, and the law does not ask why it was done, or care in what way it was done. The law only says you killed the man, and the punishment for that is imprisonment for life. But I, as a man, can see that there is a great difference in the moral guilt, and that, acting as you did in a fit of passion, suddenly and without premeditation, and smarting under an assault, it was what we should in England call manslaughter. Before I asked you to teach me, when Osip first said that he should recommend me ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... careful to verify all his statistics and meticulous in the exact description of all his events. This view of things melted from us with a gradual surprise as we realised that the more deeply we entered into the poetry, the closer we should come to the truth, of the narrative. Its moral and religious meaning is firm and steadfast as the mountains round about Jerusalem; but even as those mountains rose before us glorified, uplifted, and bejewelled by the vague splendours of the sunset, so the form of the history was enlarged and its colours irradiated by the figurative ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Governor Gen. Vasco Joachim Rocha VIEIRA (since 20 March 1991) cabinet: Consultative Council; consists of five members appointed by the governor, two nominated by the governor, five members elected for a four-year term (2 represent administrative bodies, 1 represents moral, cultural, and welfare interests, and 2 economic interests), ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... Jane, &c. At the tune of publishing the Farmer's Boy, circumstances occurred which rendered it necessary to submit these Poems to the perusal of my Friends: under whose approbation I now give them, with some confidence as to their moral merit, to the judgment of the Public. And as they treat of village manners, and rural scenes, it appears to me not ill-tim'd to avow, that I have hopes of meeting in some degree the approbation of my Country. I was not prepar'd for the decided, and I may surely say extraordinary attention which ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... youth of men of sensibility, and especially literary men, is frequently subject—a failing of nervous energy, occasioned by study and too sedentary habits, early and habitual reverie, restless and indefinite purpose. The symptoms, physical and moral, are most distressing: lassitude and despondency. And it usually happens, as in the present instance, that the cause of suffering is not recognised; and that medical men, misled by the superficial symptoms, and not seeking to acquaint ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... spirit as with a dew. This tree was covered with leaves which spoke all the languages of future races of men, and their united voices formed a perfect harmony. Its abundant fruit gave to the initiated who tasted it the knowledge of metals, stones, and plants, and also of physical and moral laws; but this fruit was like fire, and those who feared suffering and death did not dare to put it to their lips. Now, as she had listened attentively to the lessons of the serpent, Eve despised these empty terrors, and wished to taste the fruit which gave the knowledge of God. But, as ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... ship available except the John Adams, Captain Boutwell, and that she needed repairs. But he assented at last, to the proposition to let the sloop John Adams drop down abreast of the city after certain repairs, to lie off there for moral ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... brothers—on the other hand produced more vigorous children, and tended to perpetuate themselves. Whereas originally there was no tendency either one way or the other, some families developed from unknown causes, which, whatever they were, were neither moral nor utilitarian, the practice of brother and sister marriage. This diathesis followed the ordinary laws of descent, and eventually those families which were fortunate enough to be affected in ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... comparative plenty and good cheer did not last long. In a few weeks the unhappy men, or such as still clung to life, were living on a few shrimps, pieces of sealskin boots, lichens, and even more offensive food. The shortening of the ration, and the resulting hunger, broke down the moral sense of some, and by one device or another, food was stolen. Only two or three were guilty of this crime—an execrable one in such an emergency—and one of these, Private Henry, was shot by order of Lieutenant Greely toward the end of the winter. Even before Christmas, casualties which ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... trade.] The former alcaldes who, without experience in official business, without either education or knowledge, and without either the brains or the moral qualifications for such responsible and influential posts, purchased their appointments from the State, or received them in consequence of successful intrigues, received a nominal salary from the government, and paid it tribute for the right to carry on trade. Arenas considered this tribute ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... as to the allusion that "we are one body in Christ," though what the apostle here intends is equally true of Christians in all circumstances, and the consideration of it is plainly still an additional motive, over and above moral considerations, to the discharge of the several duties and offices of a Christian, yet it is manifest this allusion must have appeared with much greater force to those who, by the many difficulties they went through for the sake of their religion, were led to keep always in view the ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... are so common that they have been made to point a moral in popular proverbs. According to an Italian saying translators are traitors ("I traduttori sono traditori''); and books are said to be done into English, traduced in French, and overset in Dutch. Colton, ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... proportion. There should have been a remedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this minute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny. Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit asserting himself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral or physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readiness of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead the man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for the matter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... that we may be warned and directed. We shall understand the true moral character of our actions a great deal better when we look back upon them calmly, and when all the rush of temptation and the reducing whispers of our own weak wills are silenced. There is nothing more terrible, in one aspect, there is nothing more salutary ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... which he had passed in a Chateau of the family of Boulat du Colombier near Valence. Bonaparte set great value on the opinion of the Chateaux, because while living in the country he had observed the moral influence which their inhabitants exercise over their neighbourhood. He had succeeded to a great degree in conciliating them, but the news of the death of the Due d'Enghien alienated from him minds which were still wavering, and even those which had already ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Arundell,' contains Latin translations of several of the Orations of Isocrates, and 'The Tragedie of Euripides called Iphigeneia, translated out of Greake into Englisshe.' Among the royal manuscripts is also to be found a beautiful little volume of fourteen vellum leaves,[27] containing copies of moral apophthegms, in Latin, which Sir Nicholas Bacon had inscribed on the walls of his house at Gorhambury. On the first page, above the arms of Lady Lumley, which are splendidly emblazoned, is written in gold capitals, 'Syr . Nicholas ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Frieda Hammer was not a bad girl. But for all these years her moral sense had remained undeveloped. She was like a man who has worked in a factory all his life, where the continuous roar of the machinery dulls his sense of hearing, so that all the finer tones are lost upon him. Frieda was so unaccustomed to the qualities of unselfishness and friendliness, that ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... passages, but is as unreal as Jane Eyre. It shares with many of Wordsworth's narrative poems the defect of being written to illustrate an abstract moral theory, so that the overbearing thesis is continually thrusting the poetry to the wall. Applied to the drama, such predestination makes all the personages puppets and disenables them for being characters. Wordsworth seems to have felt this when he published "The ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 'The passage from the natural world to the spiritual world is hermetically sealed on the natural side.' that is, man cannot by any means make his own unaided way from the lower world to the higher. 'No mental energy, no evolution, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization' can alone lift life from the lower to the higher. Further, the lower can know very little about the higher, for 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... not even turn her head at the noise. In her youth hysterical troubles had unbalanced her mind. Of an ardent and passionate nature and subject to nervous attacks, she had yet reached the great age of eighty-three when a dreadful grief, a terrible moral shock, destroyed her reason. At that time, twenty-one years before, her mind had ceased to act; it had become suddenly weakened without the possibility of recovery. And now, at the age of 104 years, she lived here as if forgotten by the world, a quiet madwoman ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... heart by faith and the moral law dwells in my members, the one to keep up peace with God, the other to keep my conversation in a good decorum, then am I right, and ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... informed, was not the case with them—that all the requirements of life were somehow mysteriously 'provided.' Neither did I get any reference to a definite 'temporary penal state,' but I gathered that people begin there at the point of intellectual and moral development where they leave off here; and since their state of happiness was based mainly upon sympathy, those who came over in a low moral condition, failed at first for various lengths of time to have the capacity ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle |
