"Morality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... book deals with a very delicate but most important matter, namely, the voluntary limitation of the family, and how such action affects morality, the ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... Just:" integrity was his peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real. Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first principles of morality ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... confederates, because it suggests a distinct motive for their stealing the money. A gentleman who is going to spend his honeymoon at Richmond wants money; and a gentleman who is in debt to all his tradespeople wants money. Is this an unjustifiable imputation of bad motives? In the name of outraged Morality, I deny it. These men have combined together, and have stolen a woman. Why should they not combine together and steal a cash-box? I take my stand on the logic of rigid Virtue, and I defy all the sophistry of Vice to move me an inch ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... the thin security of self-satisfied morality, can now no more tease us with their sleek impertinence. In the presence of a venture of this high distinction, of a faith of this tragic intensity, such shabby counterfeits of the race's hope ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... moment even of his embarkation men did not believe in his promises, they were suspicious of his exaggerations, and dreaded the results of an expedition directed by a man so fool-hardy, and of a morality so equivocal." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of vicarious sacrifices and imaginary falls, with all the mystical and contentious philosophy which has centred round the subject, how very different the level of human culture and happiness would be to-day! Such theories, with their absolute want of reason or morality, have been the main cause why the best minds have been so often alienated from the Christian system and proclaimed themselves materialists. In contemplating what shocked their instincts for truth they have lost that which was both true and beautiful. Christ's death was worthy ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the institutions of religion, and upon the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality. "I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday School ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the plague and could not be carried away, rather than leave them to be murdered by the Turks, but the physician would not consent. He said that after talking the subject over very often he had changed his mind on the morality of the measure. He owned to shooting the Turks, and said they had broken their capitulation. He found great fault with the French Admiral who fought the battle of the Nile, and pointed out what he ought ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... interesting, paved the way to the present manners. If the basis of morality be at this day overthrown in France, the regency of Philip of Orleans, by completing what the dissolute court of Lewis XIV had begun, has occasioned that rapid change, whose influence was felt long before the revolution, and will, in all probability, last for ages. At least, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt's granddaughter out of the nursery—it will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humour; but ah! it's a weary feast that banquet of wit where no love is. It palls very ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has held the reins of this department—so useful and so vilified—he has made it a rule that family matters are never to be interfered in. He is right in principle and in morality; but in practice he is wrong. In the forty-five years that I have served in the police, it did, from 1799 till 1815, great services in family concerns. Since 1820 a constitutional government and the press have completely altered the conditions of existence. So my advice, indeed, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... allegorical and it was the first successful attempt to revive the ancient morality play of which "Everyman" is the best ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... put forward as a plea that the public should close its eyes to possible shortcomings. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is precisely in the lack of privacy characterizing the poet's life that his enemies find their justification for concerning themselves with his morality. Since by flaunting his personality in his verse he propagates his faults among his admirers, the public is surely justified in pointing out and ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... beginning has been luminous with noble achievement. It is high privilege and high honor to be a citizen of this grand republic. It is in very truth a government of the people, in an important sense a government standing separate and apart; its foundations the morality, the intelligence, the patriotism of the people. Never forget that citizenship in such a government carries with it tremendous responsibility, a responsibility that we cannot evade. Study thoroughly how our liberties were achieved, and the benefits of stable government ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... perhaps most characteristic of the Hebrew people is the great lesson that this Eternal God, who created the universe and cares for his people, demands righteousness of his people. To the nations round about religion was not a matter of righteousness. For them religion had nothing to do with morality. Thieves might have gods favorable to them quite as well as righteous men. The worship of Diana of the Ephesians or of Astarte in the groves of the Asia Minor coast could be so unspeakably licentious and vile as ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... nowadays, but it seemed to him that the trend of feeling was in the direction of Old Testamentary ideals. Men were growing tired of offering their other cheek to be smitten; they found it degrading, as do the Arabs. Why not import some of these sterner conceptions into our morality, as we import their peppery curries and kouskous and pilaffs into ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... a general spirit of revolt. All the religious and social discontent of the times floated instinctively to this new centre. The socialist dreams of the peasantry, the new and keener spirit of personal morality, the hatred of the friars, the jealousy of the great lords towards the prelacy, the fanaticism of the reforming zealot were blended together in a common hostility to the Church and a common resolve to substitute personal religion for its dogmatic and ecclesiastical system. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... the conjecture, as the week went by without further confirmation of that kiss, for, after all, who knew anything about the character and antecedents of Susan? As for Mr. Wyse, was he not a constant visitor to the fierce and fickle South, where, as everyone knew, morality was wholly extinct? And how, if it was all too true, should Tilling treat this hitherto unprecedented situation? It was terrible to contemplate this moral upheaval, which might prove to be a social upheaval also. Time and again, as Miss Mapp vainly waited for news, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... each other. Men the most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts, passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of every thing that belongs to the realm of sentiment—religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, &c.—the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker, but from the point of view of character the difference ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and dishonesty. They have found out the strength of combination, and the possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are falling lower and lower. Their morality is sapped at the root. They have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be up in arms for their assistance, and that weak but well-meaning ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... connected that on the stage last evening I could easily hear the click of ivory chips and the clatter of drinking glasses. One man owns and controls the entire outfit, and employs for his variety stage any kind of talent which will please the vicious class to which he caters. All questioning as to morality is thoroughly eliminated. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... uttered or written a word against the Manbo's sexual morality. It is true that sexual matters are discussed with the greatest freedom, but the most venial breaches of morality are punished. The greatest modesty is observed in regard to the exposure of the private parts. Gazing ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... cannot help being struck with wonder and admiration, at the great work Sister Bourgeois undertook and accomplished. We behold a simple country girl forming the then astonishing project of going to Canada, in the hope of founding a city bearing the name of Mary, there to teach religion and morality to persons of her own sex. What seemingly insurmountable obstacles presented themselves to her view. She must undertake a voyage of many thousand leagues, must traverse immense and unknown seas, must expect to live ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... the American Colonies were bound to win in their struggle with Britain because nature had decreed the time for parting; and even if we should succeed in this contest we should free the slaves ourselves inside of twenty years, because slavery is now opposed to common sense as well as to morality." ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... persecutes poor debtors; Nicholas Nickleby, the abuses of charity schools and brutal schoolmasters; and Oliver Twist, the unnecessary degradation and suffering of the poor in English workhouses. Dickens's serious purpose was to make the novel the instrument of morality and justice, and whatver we may think of the exaggeration of his characters, it is certain that his stories did more to correct the general selfishness and injustice of society toward the poor than all the works of other literary men of his ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... edition of Lord Bolingbroke's works, edited by David Mallet, that Dr. Johnson pronounced this memorable sentence upon both author and editor:—"Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had no resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... persons, and even state-creditors, to enlist under the standard of COCHON, (the Police Minister,) because such is the honourable conduct of our sovereigns, that they pay their spies in specie—and their soldiers, and the creditors of the state, in paper.—Such is the morality, such the justice, such are the republican virtues, so loudly vaunted by our good and dearest friends, our pensioners—the Gazetteers ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... to do. He could find no joint in Charlie's armour. The boy was so thoroughly manly, so simple-hearted, so trustful and innocent, that Wilton could make nothing of him. If he tried to indoctrinate Charlie into the state of morality among the Noelites, either Charlie did not understand him, or else quite openly expressed his disapproval and even indignation; and when finally Wilton quite tired out, did throw off the mask, Charlie shook him away from him, turned with a sickening ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... subjects are too grave, Too much morality you have,— Too much about religion; Give me some witch and wizard tales Of slip-shod ghosts with fins and scales, Of ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... can truthfully be alleged against Voltaire is his attacks on religion. If he had been a true philosopher he would never have spoken on such matters, for, even if his attacks were based on truth, religion is necessary to morality, without which there ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... have Mr. B. Some day, perhaps, he may read this letter and realise how extremely awkward an inflexible standard of morality can make things for one's neighbours. The last sentence of all has a pathetic ring, as of a Utopian throwing up the sponge: "I think much better to add little serpent-like wisdom to upright manhood and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... Delsarte never finished his complete philosophy; but let us be grateful to him for having raised his art and all arts to the level of philosophy, by giving them truth as a basis and morality as a final aim; which fairly justifies, it seems to me, the title of artist-philosopher, which I have sometimes applied ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... been admitted by baptism within the Christian pale. There was among the English a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the interests of his religion were concerned, thought himself free from all the ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or reproach from the Church of which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of composing a long refutation of his main ideas, in which Bacon's blindness, presumption, profanity, and scientific charlatanry are denounced in vehement and almost coarse terms, and treated as the natural outcome of a low morality. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... presence the illustrious masters drew in their theological claws. They were churchmen, but they were Armagnacs, for the most part business men, diplomatists, old councillors of the Dauphin.[739] As priests, doubtless they were possessed of a certain body of dogma and morality, and of a code of rules for judging matters of faith. But now it was a question not of curing the disease of heresy, but of driving out the English. Jeanne was in favour with my Lord the Duke of Alencon and with my Lord the Bastard; the inhabitants of Orleans were ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... convert public opinion in this country,—but in favour of the Church, the Established Church, which has been so fertile a nursery of illustrious laymen; and I have often thought that one main and undetected cause of the lower tone of morality, public and private, of the greater corruption of manners, of the more prevalent scorn of religion which we see, for instance, in a country so civilized as France, is, that its clergy can train no sons to carry into the contests ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gets back from the office before these people leave, he will sneak up to his room and stay there till it's safe to come out. The last time I made him come to one of these parties he was pounced on by a woman who talked to him for an hour about the morality of Finance and seemed to think that millionaires were ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Whitney's game and, in exchange, was to get control of the Ranger-Whitney Company. And what Whitney had said about the folly of board managements, about the insecurity of his own position, was undeniably true; and the sacrifice of the "smaller morality" for the "larger good" would be merely doing what the biographies of the world's men of achievement revealed them as doing again and again. Further, once in control, once free to put into action the plans for a truly vast concern, of which he had ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... grottoes in the rocks, where they are still to be found. The Spaniards, the first discoverers and appropriators of the island, have described in high terms the state of civilization, methods of agriculture, and remarkably pure morality of these ancient inhabitants, who nevertheless were entirely exterminated by the tyranny ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... of undigested morality is uttered to the world, under the disguise of a pretended public virtue. In the eye of reason, the man who deliberately and voluntarily contracts civil engagements is more strictly bound to their fulfilment, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself and his followers. Then, he preached—he, though not a Brahman—in the vernacular languages—an immense innovation, which made his teachings popular. He put in the forefront of his system certain great fundamental principles of morality. He made religion consist in duty, not rites. He reduced duty mainly to mercy or kindness toward all living beings—a marvelous generalization. This set aside all slaughter of animals. The mind of the princes and people was ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... men in the world who am keeping themselves easy with the thought that if they are not very good, they never pretended or professed to be,—as if this failure publicly to pronounce themselves on the side of the highest morality, were a sufficient apology for minor delinquencies! It seems to be a poultice of poppies to some sensitively inflamed consciences, that, whatever they may have done, they have never broken promises voluntarily made, to do right—as if there were a release from the obligation ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Koenigsburg, where the emperor was assassinated, and there in cloistered gloom they passed the remainder of their lives. It was an age of superstition, and yet there were some who comprehended and appreciated the pure morality ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... take it on the following evening. I made, in fact, most methodical arrangements. I seemed so completely to have missed my mark. The superstitions against the practice I did not regard, as they are merely the produce of a more imaginative and anxious system of morality. I did not see why God, for His own purposes—and, what is more, I believe He does—should not remove a man by suicide, if He allows him to die by a horrible disease or relegates him to insanity. Suicide is only a symptom of a certain pitch of mental distress: ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... end to their extravagancies. Various ways were still, however, resorted to by various tempers to snatch the full enjoyment of that life which they were so soon to lose, at the expense of every possible violation of the laws of morality. Only a few lived on in a quiet and orderly manner, in reliance on the saving help of God, without running into any excess of anxiety or indulgence. After this desolating scourge had raged during four years, its violence seemed at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... pity of you, OLD MORALITY, Back from your rest to loud banality. After St. Stephen's shindy, Devon No doubt appeared a very heaven: But cream's as much like water chalky ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... on the rewards of frightfulness. Whereat the mother, finding her protests disregarded, dried her eyes and set herself to fill the poor child's infrequent leisure with anti-toxin injections of the higher morality as conveyed in the poetry of TENNYSON. You now take my meaning when I speak of Mr. INGE as sufficiently single-minded to brave some danger of unintentional humour. Really my sketch has done less than justice to a story that will hold your interest, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... coureurs de bois—those wild spirits who roamed the woods in the hope of making great profits through the fur trade, from which by law they were excluded, and provoked the special disfavour of the missionary by the scandals of their lives, which gave the Indians a low idea of French morality. Thus in the eyes of both Church and State the coureur de bois was a mauvais sujet, and the offence of taking to the forest without a licence became punishable by death ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... and considering that the Faith is rich in interpretation, I clung on to the waggon in such a manner that it did all my work for me, and yet could not be said to be actually carrying me. Distinguo. The essence of a vow is its literal meaning. The spirit and intention are for the major morality, and concern Natural Religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special worship a man talks to you of the Spirit and Intention, and complains of the dryness of the Word, look at him askance. He is not far removed ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... as in all other places not much joined in by the congregation; the prayers simple and unobjectionable, but the sermon very poor, ultra orthodox thing, text 8 Romans, first six verses, Original sin, morality, etc. worse than Pike Presbyterianism, and worse than English Calvinism, Redemption by Christ deferred till next Sunday when the Sacrament will be delivered; notice of two new members having been examined and then admitted. Mr. Axton the minister a man about ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his appetites, cannot enjoy it. Verily there are strange contradictions in our conventional morality. Eyes which, looking across the Atlantic on the gay Sabbath dances of French peasants are turned upward with horror, are somehow blind to matters close at home. What would be sin past repentance in an individual becomes quite proper ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... extract from a lecture. We can have progress in some things, but not in others. We have progressed in the matter of conveniences, comforts, and luxuries, but in what other directions? Are we any better than the people who lived in the days of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison? Is the standard of morality any higher now than it was in the days ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... quantities in a Christian. The moment the new life of the risen Christ is wrought in a believer and he is linked up by the Holy Ghost to the glorified body of the Son of God he has in him all the impulse and power of the highest morality, the most exalted purity, the rarest spirituality and the discernment of spiritual things. All that is self-evident—but the Son of God came into this world and went through the amazing tragedy and sacrifice of the cross ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... appointed to the Supreme Bench, had been eight years Secretary of State, and four years President. His opportunities were great, his advantages rare, his natural abilities strong. To those he added a high standard of morality, and a love and endurance of labor possessed by few. But it may fairly be doubted whether, if his Presidency had closed his public life, his fame would have attracted special observation. He would scarcely have ranked ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be included within the boundaries of the great republic, retained organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of a better age survived to ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... sweetness of her maiden prime and the pathos of her end, but to place her, as some do, high on the list of Shakespeare's peerless women fastens upon Hamlet unmerited reproach. There is a love that includes friendship, as religion includes morality, and such was Portia's for Bassanio. There is a love whose first instinctive movement is to share the burden of the loved one, and such was Miranda's love for Ferdinand. And there is a love that reserves the light of its light and the perfume ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... And their morality is of the lowest grade in consequence. They murder and steal whenever the chance offers, and when they think the little children too much care for them they pitch them into the rivers for the crocodiles to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... desk, and having duly sworn to support the Constitution took his seat in the chair as Vice President. This quiet, gentlemanly and rather dignified figure, hardly taller than Madison, and dressed in much the same manner, impressed with favour all who first met him. An aristocrat imbued in the morality of Lord Chesterfield and Napoleon Bonaparte, Colonel Burr was the chosen head of Northern democracy, idol of the wards of New York City, and aspirant to the highest offices he could reach by means legal or beyond the law; for, as he pleased himself with saying after the manner ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... distant epoch that closed half a decade ago, in a day when existence was easy; when food was always to be had for the asking, when a bed was never denied to the weary who would beg it the wide land over, there arose a band of young men with slack ideas about property, with archaic ideas of morality—ideas perhaps of property and morals that were not unfamiliar to their elder comrades of the quest and the joust, and the merry wars. These modern lads, pilgrims seeking their olden, golden comrade Danger, sallied forth upon the highroads ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... unconnected with accumulation of property, these civilized savages and commercial barbarians attained their sordid end. Before they had rounded the first half-century of their existence as a nation they had sunk so low in the scale of morality that it was considered nothing discreditable to take the hand and even visit the house of a man who had grown rich by means notoriously corrupt and dishonorable; and Harley declares that even the editors and writers ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... with Thackeray, the light current tone of sportiveness or irony heightens the rare solemnity of didactic moral earnestness. Of all the Latin poets, says Sir Richard Fanshaw, Horace is the fullest fraught with excellent morality. In the six stately Odes which open the third book, together with a later Ode (xxiv) which closes the series and ought never to have been severed from it, Horatian poetry rises to its greatest height of ethical impressiveness. Ushered in with the solemn words of a hierophant bidding ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... existing in the Territory of Utah, and have asked for definite legislation to correct it. That polygamy should exist in a free, enlightened, and Christian country, without the power to punish so flagrant a crime against decency and morality, seems preposterous. True, there is no law to sustain this unnatural vice; but what is needed is a law to punish it as a crime, and at the same time to fix the status of the innocent children, the offspring of this system, and of the possibly innocent plural wives. But as an institution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... her death, but incapable of remembering her precepts. Though my father was doatingly fond of her, yet there were some sentiments in which they materially differed: she had been bred from her infancy in the strictest principles of religion, and took the morality of her conduct from the motives which an adherence to those principles suggested. My father, who had been in the army from his youth, affixed an idea of pusillanimity to that virtue, which was formed by the doctrines, excited ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... something else than this everlasting wrangle and racket between factions. I like fighting, but I like to have a natural fighter admit he's in it just for the sake of fighting—not claim it's all for morality's sake!" ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... personae, one of the leading characteristics is loyalty to a dominant ideal. In Strafford's case it is that of unswerving devotion to the King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it is that of subservience respectively to conventional morality and family pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the most hopelessly monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): in Valence's, in "Colombe's Birthday," to chivalric love: in Charles, in "King Victor and King Charles," to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in "The Return ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... connected with the history of the Fouans, a family of peasants, the senior member of which, having grown old, divided his land among his three children. The intense and brutish rapacity of these peasants, their utter lack of any feeling of morality or duty, their perfect selfishness, not stopping short of parricide, form a picture of horror unequalled in fiction. It is only to be regretted that the author, in leaving nothing to the imagination, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... same Autumn—1535—Cromwell as Vicar-General opened his great campaign against the monasteries; actuated, according to the historians on one side, by a determination to remove a cancer which was destroying the morality of the nation; according to the historians on the other side, by the vast opportunities ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... differently. The Allied statesmen talked much about democracy, but when their turn came they plundered and despoiled with a practiced imperial hand. France and Britain, as well as Germany and Austria, were capitalist Empires. The Peace embodies the essential economic morality of capitalist imperialism, the morality ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... in them, surely. What is it that you don't like? The French haven't our standards of morality, of course, but don't you think it's rather narrow to judge ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... opportunity for introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had debated almost exclusively ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Legion of Honor by the French Government in 1883, on the occasion of his literary jubilee. When several years ago cheap reprints were brought out on the Continent and attempts were made by various guardians of morality—they exist in all countries— to have them suppressed, the judicial decisions were invariably against the plaintiff and in favor of the publisher. Are Americans children that they must be protected from books ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... to escape them.—In my opinion the peculiar tendency of this work is to produce in the mind that "humility" which "goes before honor," to impart to the thoughtless, a sense of the awful restraints of morality.—Mrs. Willard, Prin. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Franklin to begin with. He thought it would read like a story book and be both entertaining and instructive. But he found out his mistake soon after we began it. Benjamin Franklin was much too business-like a person. The narrowness of his calculated morality disgusted my father. In some cases he would get so impatient at the worldly prudence of Franklin that he could not help using strong words of denunciation. Before this I had nothing to do with Sanskrit beyond getting some rules of grammar by rote. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... grimly until at last his emotions overcame him. He growled, "Confound it, I can't do it! Belay there, men; I'll have another think over this job." And think he did, with businesslike solemnity, all day long. He saw that he might make a small fortune by risking his liberty, and the curious morality of the British sailor prevented him from seeing shades of right or wrong where contraband business was concerned. Had you told him that the tobacco was stolen, he would have pitched you overboard; he felt ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... that "in all the coffee houses you have not only the foreign prints but several English ones with foreign occurrences, besides papers of morality ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... interesting turn of affairs that shall be thought to merit the notice of the reader as matter of entertainment, or that can be of service to the public as inhabitants of an English colony....And here we beg leave to observe that we shall have nothing so much at heart as the support of virtue and morality and the noble cause of liberty. The refined amusements of literature and the pleasing veins of well-pointed wit shall also be considered as necessary to the collection—interspersed with other ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... notes our common mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of princes, although ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... how difficult it is at present for the men of reasonable and liberal views, who do not wish to declare themselves against both religion and morality, to find a ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... repeat the word God or recite the raptures of adoring bards, the sentences they maunder and the sentiments they belie are alike covered with rust; and in due time some Shelley will turn atheist in the interest of religion, and some Johnson in the interest of morality aver that he writes for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... writing in French literature, a really charming little idyl—a Parisian idyl, to be sure, and not precisely the most suitable reading for young girls. Nothing is more peculiar than a Frenchman's ideas of morality in literature; for, strange as it may appear, several of Feuillet's books are considered highly edifying, and the secretary of the Academy, upon his entrance into that august body, was able to greet him with the, in France, by no means negative praise that it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... years, great aptitude for the acquisition of learning, great taste, judgment and application, and a wonderful memory. He found, in his father, an excellent tutor: by him, Grotius was instructed in the rudiments of the Christian doctrine, and his infant mind impressed with sound principles of morality and honour; in this, he was aided by the mother of Grotius. The youth corresponded with their cares. He has celebrated, in elegant verses, their pious attention to his early education. The mention of these ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... light, Sir Thomas; the fuss he makes about morality and religion is a proof that he is. In the meantime, I agree with you that there is little time to be lost. The lawyers must set to work immediately; and the sooner the better, for I ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that he could confine himself to a purely grammatical exposition or to bare exegesis. He had to introduce fascinating legends, subtle deductions, ingenious comparisons. The Bible was studied, not so much for its own sake, as for the fact that it was the text-book of morality, the foundation of belief, the source of all hopes. Every thought, every feeling bore an intimate relation to Scriptures. The Midrash exercised an irresistible attraction upon simple, deeply devout souls. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... much of that tirade is meant to be serious; but to waive the question of the tiger's morality, do you really—I will not say sympathize,—but justify Robespierre, Dominic, St. Just, and the rest of the fanatics who have waded ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in India and Greece. Orphic doctrines. In India ascetic acts were supposed to produce not only holiness but also power, which might arise to superhuman degrees or even avail to overcome gods. Rohde[2155] finds that the theological ascetic morality of the later history of Greece, which was not a determination of the will in a given direction but a mode of defending the soul from an external evil influence which threatened to soil it, had its first impulse in the notion of the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... his eyes to the fact that for him this marriage would be bigamy; that their children would be illegitimate in the eyes of the law if legal scrutiny ever laid bare their father's history; nor that by all the accepted dictums of current morality he would be leading an innocent woman into sin. But current morality had ceased to have its old significance for Hollister. He had seen too much of it vaporized so readily in the furnace of the war. Convention had lost any power to dismay ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pages vice stripped of its false colours; to show it "in its native Deformity." As the native and stripped deformity of vice is perhaps not often fully apprehended and certainly is very seldom exposed in our own age, Fielding, by the very sincerity and fire of his morality, doubtless loses many ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... upon the pleasures and the honours of the great world, as I really was, there had never, since I had recognized and formed a decided code of principles, been a single moment in which I had transgressed it; and perhaps I was sterner and more inflexible in the tenets of my morality, such as they were, than even the most zealous worshipper of the letter, as well as the spirit of the law and the prophets, would require. Certainly there were many pangs within me, when I reflected, that to save a criminal, in whose safety I was selfishly concerned, I ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... surprising success, altogether beyond its merits, which simply testified to the intense interest the suspicion of extraordinary viciousness has for common minds. Oscar's genius was not given in the book at all, but his humour was indicated and a malevolent doubt of his morality insisted upon again and again. Rumour had it that the book was true in every particular, that Mr. Hichens had taken down Oscar's talks evening after evening and simply reproduced them. I asked Oscar if this ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... day increasing; and though the pope declared them excommunicated, these military plunderers, however deeply affected with the sentence, to which they paid a much greater regard than to any principles of morality, could not be induced by it to betake themselves to peaceable or ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... incidentally, either of treatment or prevention. The omission of such considerations at this stage is intentional. It may safely be said that in no other field of human activity is so vast an amount of strenuous didactic morality founded on so slender a basis of facts. In most other departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content ourselves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... greater literary geniuses, and more prominent philanthropists; but she was enabled to exercise an influence superior to any of them, by her friendship with people of rank, by her clear and powerful writings, and by her lofty piety and morality, which blazed amid the vices of fashionable society one ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... edify all young ladies of a tender age. These would be well enough if they appeared to have any base in solid moral principle, but they are somewhat offensive as the mere sentimentality of conscience and religion, introduced for the purposes of fine writing. Suspicion, also, always attaches to the morality which exhibits itself on rhetorical stilts, and the refinement which is always proclaiming itself refined. Since the time of Joseph Surface there has been a great decline in the market ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... system of jurisprudence, why, I've nothing to say. That's anarchy, not government. The South is growing faster relatively than the North. The politicians on both sides are scared about the balance of power, and they're simply taking advantage of this cry of morality. They're putting the moralists out as cat's-paws to the fire!" Judge Clayton almost abandoned ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... writers—not the weakest—who still cling to the old-fashioned mould. Putting Lancelot and Amyas out of the question, I think I would sooner have "stood up" to most heroes of romance than to sturdy Adam Bede. It can't be a question of religion or morality, for "muscular Christianity" is the stock-sarcasm of the opposite party: it must be a question of good taste. Well, ancient Greece is supposed to have had some floating ideas on that subject, and she deified Strength. It is perfectly true, that to thrash a prize-fighter unnecessarily is not ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... within thee, ere again ill-using me. Art thou aware Of nothing there Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me? A brain that mourns THINE unredeemed rascality? A soul that weeps at THY threadbare morality? Both grieving that THEIR individuality Is merged ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... intention to the holy father, and craved his absolution and paternal benediction. He received an answer from the cardinal, by which he found that his purpose was extremely applauded; and he came over to England with a full design of carrying it into execution. So deeply are the sentiments of morality engraved in the human breast, that it is difficult even for the prejudices of false religion totally to efface them; and this bigoted assassin resolved, before he came to extremities, to try every other expedient for alleviating the persecutions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... nature. In a word, it is a policy which is in direct opposition to the true spirit of religion, to the altruistic ideals of humanity, and to that sentiment of humility and moderation which is the natural basis of all morality. ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... recently on the result of a four years' experiment with (1) shade, (2) no shade, (3) partial shade, says that so far partial shade has given the best results. No general solution has yet been found to the question of the advantage of shade, and, as Shaw states for morality, so in agriculture, "the golden rule is that there is no golden rule." Not only is there the personal factor, but nature provides an infinite variety of environments, and the best results are obtained by the use of methods appropriate to the ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp |
