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Moral   /mˈɔrəl/   Listen
Moral

noun
1.
The significance of a story or event.  Synonym: lesson.



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"Moral" Quotes from Famous Books



... Madame de Merteuil. It raised in my mind a detestation of such cold-blooded, inhuman profligacy, and I felt that I would rather every pleasure that can flow from the intercourse of women were debarred me than run such a course. The moral effect upon my mind was stronger than any which ever resulted from the most didactic work, and if anyone wants to excite remorse in the most vicious mind I would recommend him to make use of 'Les Liaisons ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... his world should see in him an incorrigible scoffer at moral conventions. He rather enjoyed being the object of maternal warnings to young daughters, but in financial affairs no stern moralist could have been more observant of rigid integrity, and in that, as in other things, he reversed the usual order. The business involved in the ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... for the common forms of labor. But in old Japan the occupation of the farmer and artisan were not despised; trade alone appears to have been considered degrading, and the distinction may have been partly a moral one." ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... a sort of moral isolation, amid all this immorality, and, although she had learned suddenly to disseminate, although she received the comtesse with outstretched hand and smiling lips, she felt this consciousness of hollowness, this contempt for humanity increasing and enveloping ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... secured we must prepare and work out a plan of scientific organization sufficiently complete in its details to serve as a guide in organizing an Association. For my own part, I feel no capability whatever of directing an Association by discipline, by ideas of duty, moral suasion and any other similar means. I want organization; I want a mechanism suited and adapted to human nature, so that human nature can follow its laws and attractions and go rightly, and be its own guide. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... of manhood was the carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures' anatomies. Why, you whelp, you even won other fellows' girls away from them, not because you wanted the girls, but because in the marrow of those about you, those who set your moral pace, was the instinct of the wild stallion and the bull-seal. Well, the years have passed, and what do you think about ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... this tragedy, to whose vigorous mind the English are indebted for their choicest moral works, came into the world with a frame so weak, that he was christened immediately on his birth, in consequence of the symptoms he gave of a speedy dissolution. The hand which reared him did a more than ordinary ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... did not have more than one woman. I answer, they had; for as they had no law to bind them to one woman, they could have as many as they pleased by mutual agreement. But notwithstanding, they had a sense of the moral law, for many of them felt that it was right to have but one woman; they had different opinions about plurality of wives, as have the most educated and ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer

... one fourth of the whole number are positively good, and one fourth positively bad, while the remaining two fourths are more or less good or more or less bad, floating undecided between the two poles of the moral magnet, sometimes drawn one ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... forms a fitting close to its predecessor, 'Home Influence.' The results of maternal care are fully developed, its rich rewards are set forth, and its lesson and its moral are powerfully enforced."—Morning Post. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... conditions that make this apparent prosperity; that the economic resources are no longer limitless and free; that the aggregate national wealth is increasing at the cost of present social justice and moral health, and the future well-being of the American people. The Granger and the Populist were prophets of this reform movement. Mr. Bryan's Democracy, Mr. Debs' Socialism, and Mr. Roosevelt's Republicanism all had in common the emphasis upon the need of governmental regulation ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... me now, on reviewing the whole matter, almost unaccountable that, with such evidence before me, I should not have got in a labourer, and had the spot effectually dug and searched. I can only say, that so it was. I was quite satisfied of the moral truth of every word that had been related to me, and which I have here set down with scrupulous accuracy. But I experienced an apathy, for which neither then nor afterwards did I quite know how to account. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... rather believe that all these material improvements in the condition of Ireland only make the need for Home Rule stronger and more urgent. They will realise that Ireland requires not a material, but a moral cure to give her the full value of the new reforms. Her need is to be removed once and for all from the class of dependent communities. She wants the great tonic cure ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance. There was nothing for it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party. His imposing presence would keep off wanton insults, but on the other hand, he had not the moral weight of authority possessed by Tibble, and though far from being a drunkard, he was not proof against a carouse, especially when out of reach of his Bet and of his master, and he was not by any means Tib's equal in fine ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... our first American Cardinal, October 10th, 1885, called forth from the press, and from the clergy of other denominations, a uniform expression of deep and touching respect. He had won many moral victories without fighting battles; his victories left no rancor. Everywhere at Catholic altars Masses were offered for the repose of his soul, and when the tidings crossed the Atlantic, the solemn services at Paris and Rome attested the sense of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... in its own mind that the point had been carried in its own favor, was so eminently in the spirit of the time, that there be no wonder at the silence as to the real victor, though it is surprising that Mistress Bradstreet let slip so excellent an opportunity for the moral so ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... national ideal of a hero-king. Both here and in chapter ix. 2 his stature and bravery are the only qualities mentioned. What Israel wanted was a rough fighter, with physical strength, plenty of bone and muscle. About moral, intellectual or spiritual qualities they did not care, and they got the kind of king that they wanted,—the only kind that they could appreciate. The only way to teach them that one who was a head and shoulders taller than any of them was not thereby ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the author of the Inquiry into the Human Mind, had in 1763 succeeded Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy. Dugald Stewart was his pupil the winter before Johnson's visit. Stewart's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... by saying that if it betrayed any weakness of thought or inelegance of expression this was only what might be expected from a man who had so long been surrounded by the coarse and offensive patois of barbarians. We need hardly follow him into the ordinary topics of moral philosophy with which it abounds, or expose the inconsistency of its tone with that of Seneca's other writings. He consoles the freedman with the "common commonplaces" that death is inevitable; that grief is useless; that we are all ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... knit than any Celtic realm had been; the Danes were fewer than their Anglo-Saxon predecessors; and Alfred was made of sterner stuff than early British princes. He was typical of Wessex; moral strength and all-round capacity rather than supreme ability in any one direction are his title-deeds to greatness. After hard fighting he imposed terms of peace upon the Danish leader Guthrum. England south-west ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... frequently with one another. And among the dissolute suitors Irus the beggar is brought in, contesting for a prize with the most noble Odysseus, and how he appeared ridiculous in the action. Altogether it is the character of human nature, not only to be intense, but to take "a moral holiday" so that the men may be equal to the troubles of life. Such relaxation for the mind is to be found in our poet. Those who in later days introduced Comedy to produce laughter made use of bare ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... individual (or Morse or any other individual), it is necessary to emphasize the social aspects of his case. The moral of the Heike case, as has been well said, is "how easy it is for a man in modern corporate organization to drift into wrongdoing." The moral restraints are loosened in the case of a man like Heike by the insulation of himself from the sordid details of crime, through industrially coerced ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... to a shower-bath and the rheumatism sleeping bipeds who did not happen to have an india-rubber blanket, and, to crown all, rendering mining utterly impossible,—you cannot wonder that even the most moral should have become ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... has nothing to do with mine, and is only inserted here for the sake of a moral, what business have I to mention particulars of the dinner to which I was treated by that gentleman, in the spunging- house in Cursitor Street? Why, for the moral too; and therefore the public must be told of what really and truly ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... women of that family, have always been too proud and haughty to degrade themselves. Even had they lacked what is technically called moral character, their virtue has been intrenched behind their ancestry, and the achievements of their own family. Nor was there at any time an instant when any one of the Bonapartes could have overstepped, by a hair's-breadth, the line of decency, without being fatally exposed. None of them pursued ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... grounds of action, sir,' continued Dodson, with moral elevation in his air, 'you will consult your own conscience and your own feelings. We, Sir, we, are guided entirely by the statement of our client. That statement, Sir, may be true, or it may be false; it may be credible, or it may be incredible; but, if it be true, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... gaiety, or solemnity. An historic style is the particular phase, the characteristic manner of design, which prevails at a given time and place. It is not the result of mere accident or caprice, but of intellectual, moral, social, religious, and even political conditions. Gothic architecture could never have been invented by the Greeks, nor could the Egyptian styles have grown up in Italy. Each style is based upon some fundamental principle springing from its surrounding ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... holy maids, The nearest heaven on earth, Who talk with God in shadowy glades, Free from rude care and mirth; To whom some viewless teacher brings The secret lore of rural things, The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale, The whispers from above, that ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... encouraging," Walker writes, "for the soldiers to find that some besides themselves did not regard their fortunes as altogether desperate, and small as was this addition to their number it gave increased moral as well as material strength to ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... present successes are outweighed, a thousand-fold, by the pains and penalties which result from loss of confidence and loss of reputation. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds of young men to abstain from every course, from every act, which shocks their moral sensibilities, wounds their conscience, and has a tendency to weaken their sense of ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... or FRIENDLY ISLANDS (19), an archipelago in the S. Pacific, 250 m. SE. of Fiji; Tonga-tabu is the largest; volcanic and fruit-bearing; missionary enterprise (Wesleyan Methodist) has done much to improve the mental, moral, and material condition of the natives, who belong to the fair Polynesian stock, and are a superior race to the other natives of Polynesia, but are diminishing in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... principles is fast receding from the advancing intelligence of the age; the new strength and new position which that intelligence has acquired, demands for its expression, new organs, equally the representatives of its intellectual power, and of its moral energies: whilst, on the other hand, the sceptre of the northern critics has passed, from the vigorous grasp of those who established its dominion, into ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... the world have almost always been harsh and rather stupid peoples, full of a virtuous indignation of all they did not understand. The modern Prussian goes to war today with as supreme a sense of moral superiority as the Arabs when they swept down upon Egypt and North Africa. The burning of the library of Alexandria remains forever the symbol of the triumph of a militarist "culture" over civilization. This easy belief of the dull and violent that war "braces" ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... because I desired more conventional freedom than one can find among the folk at home. And now, on the first outset, I am to be cautioned and threatened by you because I have made acquaintance with a young woman. Of all the moral pastors and masters that one might come across in the world, you, Dick Shand, appear to me to be the most absurd. But you are so far right as this, that if my conduct is shocking to you, you had better ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... bye, how subtly Mr. Tennyson has embodied all this in The Princess. How he shows us the woman, when she takes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, working out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself the tender heart of flesh, which is either woman's highest blessing or her bitterest curse; how she loses all feminine sensibility to the under-current of feeling ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... kind, Catholicity inserts in her catalogue of moral sins; she endures it when and where she must; but she hates it, and directs all her energies to effect its destruction."—St. ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... forced on you, give a good account of yourself. Hear every man's censure (opinion), but express your own ideas to few. Dress well, but not ostentatiously. Neither borrow nor lend. And guarantee yourself against being false to others by setting up the high moral principle of being ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... and irreproachable lives, such as will enable ur to meet the hour of death, whether it comes by the hand of God or the persecution of man. Be faithful to the principles of our holy religion—be faithful to truth—to moral virtue—be faithful to God, before whose awful tribunal we must all appear, and render an account of our lives. It would be mere wantonness to throw yourselves into the hands of our persecutors. Reserve yourselves; for the continuance and the sustainment of our blessed religion; ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to consider that, sir. The moral question is only confusing in the matter. Our job is to make use of the law for the benefit of our client. That's what we're paid for. That's the measure ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Sangster is an "event" among a wide circle of readers. Mary E. Wilkins places Mrs. Sangster as "a legitimate successor to Louise M. Alcott as a writer of meritorious books for girls, combining absorbing story and high moral tone." Her new book is a story of "real life and real people, of incidents that have actually ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... (for it is only in what a man loves that he displays his real nature), others, from certain prudential motives, are chosen directly opposite to the person's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 . Bacon . Knyghte . to . his . very . good . ladye . the . ladye ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... Boston, both Under the State of Conviction Since the Gospell of Whitefield and Tennant [h]as been propagated in New England,[92] So that we are in hopes they will Readily Give a Just Acct. of her Cargo and her true Value and Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, which is the Moral preachd by Whitefield. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... high on the ebbing Jacobite tide, and the common round was still very much what a strong hand could do and a weak one could not do. Affections and hatreds bloom even more strongly in times of ordeal than in times of tranquillity, perhaps because the moral reins governing them have grown worn, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... Indian workmen) being an old, apathetic, half-breed, who had spent all his life here. The priest was a most profligate character; I seldom saw him sober; he was a white, however, and a man of good ability. I may as well mention here, that a moral and zealous priest is a great rarity in this province— the only ministers of religion in the whole country who appeared sincere in their calling being the Bishop of Para and the Vicars of Ega on the Upper Amazons and Obydos. The houses in the village swarmed ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... this, an thou lovest me.' I came not out to-day to listen to an abolition harangue, nor a moral homily, but to have a good time, to be civil and merry withal, if you will allow it. Of course you don't like Franklin's discharge, and of course you have done something to compensate him. I know—you have found him another ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... writer, known to literature as Aeneas Sylvius, had, at the Council of Basle, published a strong argument against the extreme papal claims, which he afterwards, as pope, retracted. His zeal against the Turk and against his old friends the humanists lent a moral tone to his pontificate, but his feeble attempts to reform ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... if ever, there is any," said Violet, "I think the wife should be the one to give way—unless she feels that to yield to the wishes of her husband would be a breach of the moral law; but in that case she must remember the answer of Peter to the high priest, 'We ought to obey God rather ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley

... our Black Belt Improvement Society. This organization has ten degrees of membership and any one of good moral standing desiring to better his condition, can become a member of the first degree. A member of the second degree, however, must own a little property, at least three chickens, and a pig. A member of the third degree must own a cow, of the fourth ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... be certain about that. I have precise information. I do not dispute that he may have contributed to accelerate the course of events by the moral influence, so to say, of the affront; but as to the general conduct and moral characteristics of that personage, I am in agreement with you. I do not know whether he is well off now, and precisely what Marfa Petrovna left him; this will be known to me within a very short period; ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit them until they apologized. He took the matter ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... the actor, Newton, whom I had in mind in offering a bread-upon-the-water moral, but a certain John Hatcher, the memory of whom in my case illustrates it much better. He was a wit and a poet. He had been State Librarian of Tennessee. Nothing could keep him out of the service, though he was a sad cripple and wholly unequal to its requirements. He fell ill. I had the opportunity ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... that assembly the celestial Rishi Narada, conversant with 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... neighborhood of Tuskingum. He is settled with his idolized mother in New York, where he is obscurely attached to one of the newspapers. That he has as yet failed to rise from the ranks in the great army of assignment men may be because moral quality tells everywhere, and to be a clever blackguard is not so well as to be simply clever. If ever Breckon has met his alter ego, as he amuses himself in calling him, he has not known it, though Bittridge may have been wiser in the case of a man ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... is marked by greater depth of spirit; comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... of the state, the professor of Moral Science at a small theological seminary caught his wife in flagrante delicto with one of the fourth-year students and opened fire upon them, at a range of ten feet, with a 12-gauge pump-gun. The Rosemont Bayonet Murder, already pretty well withered ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... that your estat royal Ne veyn delyt, nor only worthinesse Of yow in werre, or torney marcial, Ne pompe, array, nobley, or eek richesse, 1670 Ne made me to rewe on your distresse; But moral vertue, grounded upon trouthe, That was the cause I first ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... it. Our next lesson should be to realize that our instincts cannot be relied upon when it comes to understanding the child's mind, the meaning of his various activities, and how best to guide his mental and moral development. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... his faith in him never failed; but in the hour of trial, which Jesus had predicted, Peter lost courage and denied his Lord. His sin, however, was unlike that of Judas. The latter was the final step in a downward course. The former was an act of cowardice in a career of moral development which resulted in blessing and service to all the followers ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... Carlyle last night. He says over and over for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth and justice, and he too says that there is properly no religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about Kunst (art) also, in Germans, or English, or Americans.... His sneers and scoffs are thrown ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... not merely have the old superstitions been retained but there has been a marked relapse into the Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathenism. The rank superstitions, the beliefs in necromancy and witchcraft, the wild orgies of excitement, the utter divorce between the moral virtues and what is called religion, which obtain among the millions of the plantation negroes of the South, are but little understood. By one who knows it, the Black Belt has been called the great Dismal Swamp, the vast black malarial slough of the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... poet, a servant of the Muse. Bacon and Milton look kindly on him in invitation, he is walking to their company and in their company. The young hero-worshipper cannot remain satisfied with mere physical or warlike prowess. He soon sees the superiority of mental and moral mastery, of creation of good counsel. He will reverence the valiant reformer who brings justice in his train, the saint in whom goodness is enamored of goodness, the gentleman whose heart-beat is courtesy, the prophet in whom a religion is born, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... rising up before him of this great hollow room, with the trembling figure of his father struggling in the grasp of death and holding it at bay, while he gauged with worldly wisdom the physical, mental, and moral advantages of the son so long banished and so lately ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... of sound understandings," I replied, smiling, "are ever ready to exclaim 'Extravagance, and madness, and intoxication!' You moral men are so calm and so subdued! You abhor the drunken man, and detest the extravagant; you pass by, like the Levite, and thank God, like the Pharisee, that you are not like one of them. I have been more than once intoxicated, ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... opens on him and his ancestry, and his mental, moral, and physical condition—especially the latter. She accuses him of every crime known to Christian countries and some Asiatic and ancient ones. She wants to know how long he has been out of jail for kicking his wife to pieces that ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... fortuitous; in short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self, who looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our passions and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the judgment of a sort of moral ready-reckoner." ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac

... good people attribute the change to moral suasion, and that wicked people put it down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... many years to a rigorous discipline, would likely make a nice and obedient husband. Personally Mrs. Makebelieve did not admire policemen—they thought too much of themselves, and their continual pursuit of and intercourse with criminals tended to deteriorate their moral tone; also, being much admired by a certain type of woman, their morals were subjected to so continuous an assault that the wife of such a one would be worn to a shadow in striving to preserve her husband ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... floating wrecks of what had once been rules of conduct by which men had lived. And the widening responsibilities, the deepening consciousness of a force for good greater than creed or rules, all the awakening moral strength which would lend balance and power to his age, these things had been weakened in his character by the indomitable egoism which had ordered his life. There was nothing for him to fall back upon, nothing that he could place above the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil, and of good, Than all the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... leaving, forcing him indeed to the dangerous elevation of British Agent at Herat. His merits, if this be true, rest on very different grounds from those generally supposed; his courage however has been proved of a high moral cast. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Arbaces was solely of the intellect—it was awed by no moral laws. If man imposed these checks upon the herd, so he believed that man, by superior wisdom, could raise himself above them. 'If (he reasoned) I have the genius to impose laws, have I not the right to command my own creations? Still more, have I not the right to control—to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... here. California takes the airs out of a man if he has any. We are all on an equality here, and the best man wins-I mean the man of the most pluck-for success doesn't depend on moral excellence exactly. Well, old friend, are you going to settle down among ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... spoke as a man of high moral courage in making this promise, well knowing that it might involve himself in great danger. The worst that could befall Cicely might be imprisonment, and a life of constraint, jealously watched; but his own long concealment of her birth might easily be ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Raoul's moral costume was therefore in keeping with his clothes. He was fitted to be what he became to the Eve who was bored in her paradise in the rue du Rocher,—the fascinating serpent, the fine talker with magnetic eyes and harmonious motions who ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... sworn into the service of the King, he was under no obligation to remain now that the moral obligation had been removed, and so it was that he disappeared from the British camp as mysteriously as he had appeared a few ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... excitement; stock at 1000, 62, 63; Sir John Blunt, the chairman, sells out; stock falls; meeting of the company; Mr. Secretary Craggs supports directors, 63; increased panic; negociation with Bank of England, 64, 65; they agree to circulate the company's bonds, 66; total failure of the company; social and moral evils of the scheme, 67; arrogance of the directors; petitions for vengeance on them; King's speech to Parliament, 69; debates thereon, 69, 71; punishment resolved on, 70; Walpole's plan to restore credit; officers of the company ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... escaped that eternal scribbler's attention; and if his abilities had equalled his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which has since been so beautifully expressed, ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... his relatives. It was more than intimated that Tom's alleged aunt was none other than Tom's real mother, while it was also asserted that Tom's alleged uncle did not himself participate in this intimate relationship to the boy to an extent which the fastidious taste of Angel's deemed moral and necessary. Popular opinion also believed that Islington, the adopted father, who received a certain stipend ostensibly for the boy's support, retained it as a reward for his reticence regarding these facts. "He ain't ruinin' hisself by ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... I daresay it's as well for you that you shouldn't. The moral of all I have been saying is, "Be a good girl, and suffer yourself to be led, and you'll find your new stepmother the sweetest creature imaginable." You'll get on capitally with her, I make no doubt. How you'll get on with her daughter is another affair; but ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... would be at; that the Law of self-preservation impowers not a Subject to rise in Arms against his Soveraign, of another Religion, upon supposition of what he may do in his prejudice hereafter: for, since it is impossible that a moral certainty should be made out of a future contingency, and consequently, that the Soveraign may not extend his Power to the prejudice of any mans Liberty or Religion: The probability (which is the worst that they can put it) is not enough to absolve ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden

... use of me as its instrument in making Agatha's fortune. It may be said that Providence might have chosen a more moral method, but are we to presume to limit the paths of Providence to the narrow circle of our prejudices and conventions? It has its own ways, which often appear dark to us because of our ignorance. At all events, if I am able to continue these Memoirs for six or seven years more, the reader ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll' of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... 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 name ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... Persian Expedition[3] the Queen will not object to it—as the Cabinet appears to have fully considered the matter, but she must say that she does not much like it in a moral point of view. We are just putting the Emperor of Russia under the ban for trying "to bring the Sultan to his senses" by the occupation of part of his territory after a diplomatic rupture, and are now going to do exactly the same thing to the Shah ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Mr McCarthy, belaying the halliards again, "it is too late now, for they must have seen it. Besides, what have we to fear if they do come? We can easily prevent them from landing, if we like, for we're nearly two to one against them in numbers should they try force; and we are stronger by far in moral as well as ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... the number of capital inflictions, as far as is consistent with the security of society; and the employment of every method that can be devised for rendering the guilty persons serviceable to the public, and just to themselves; for correcting their moral depravity, inducing habits of industry, and arming them in future against the temptations by which they have ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... letters in the style of Junius—generally signing them Decimus or Probus—that kind of vague libellous ranting which will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote essays—moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was miserably paid when he was paid at all. None of his work written in these veins has any value as literature; but the skill with which ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... store for him. Pride goeth before 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, refused to ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... are now employed where formerly a few people sufficed, and we are all benefited in having better and cheaper goods, books, provisions, and all things needful. There is therefore the satisfaction of knowing that, by the thousand and one applications of steam, the physical, mental, and even moral condition of the people has been greatly ameliorated; in this way again proving a triumph for the application ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... was so proud that he wouldn't look at a digger or shake hands with him, not if he was a young marquis, as long as he was a digger. 'No!' he used to say, 'I have to keep my authority over these thousands and tens of thousands of people, some of them very wild and lawless, principally by moral influence, though, of course, I have the Government to fall back upon. To do that I must keep up my position, and over-familiarity would be the destruction of it.' When we saw him shaking hands with old George and inviting him to lunch we asked one of the miners next to our claim if he knew what ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... a strict watch up the avenue, and if they saw any signs of trouble they were to come a-running and do whatever I told them. These orders suggested serious business to their minds, and so they were quite content. Their great point was that if a shindy was coming they had a moral right to be mixed up ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,—make-believe That only bothers when, ball-business done, Nature demands champagne and mayonnaise. Just so has each of us sage three abjured His and her moral pet particular Pretension to superiority, And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke! Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed To live and die together—for a month, Discretion can award no more! Depart From whatsoe'er ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... with storm and cold, moral conditions from the coast to the summits were worse. The authorities on the American side seemed to accept as a sort of axiom the statement that a frontier had to be lawless. Anyway "Soapy Smith," a notorious gunman and gambler, who ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... notable. The enemy, soundly beaten, withdrew towards the Elbe, but the French, having almost no cavalry, were able to take few prisoners and their victory was incomplete. Nevertheless it produced a great moral effect in Europe, and above all in France, for it showed that our troops had retained their fighting qualities, and that only the frosts of Russia had overcome ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... supremely interesting to trace the evolution of human industries and ideas during the few tens of thousands of years of the New Stone Age. During that time moral and religious ideas are largely developed, political or social forms are elaborated, and the arts of civilised man have their first rude inauguration. The foundations of civilisation are laid. Unfortunately, precisely because the period is relatively so short and the advance so rapid, its remains ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... temperament is the only solid foundation of all moral virtues and sociable endowments. His friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... Coppee is known to fame as a prosewriter, too. His 'Contes en prose' and his 'Vingt Contes Nouveaux' are gracefully and artistically told; scarcely one of the 'contes' fails to have a moral motive. The stories are short and naturally slight; some, indeed, incline rather to the essay than to the story, but each has that enthralling interest which justifies its existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... power of description that I am unable to give even so much as a faint indication of it. Antonia inherited all her mother's amiability and all her mother's charms, but not the repellent reverse of the medal. There was no chronic moral ulcer, which might break out from time to time. Antonia's betrothed put in an appearance, whilst Antonia herself, fathoming with happy instinct the deeper-lying character of her wonderful father, sang one of old Padre Martini's [Footnote: ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... suit of many who from their wealth and position thought it impossible to sue in vain, could never look upon this Western giant in a way other than she proposed,—the ridiculous subject of a practical joke. True, he had proved himself no fool in their table-talk, but mere intellectuality and moral excellence counted for little in De Forrest's estimation when not combined with wealth and external elegance. The thought that the "giant" might have a heart, and that Lottie's clever seeming might win it, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... 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 untouched, in the books I send you, the question ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... have profited by M. Dumas's last discourse on M. de la Rive. You have done well to record these declarations of a permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, M. Dumas's character has not the moral authority which is desirable in such serious matters. His taking part in public business, far from increasing his credit, has lessened it; even his scientific standing has suffered; people doubt his sincerity; and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... doubted whether another conviction would add to my sentence, and I was anxious to secure the moral advantage of a careful and spirited defence in the Court of Queen's Bench before the Lord Chief Justice of England. The Governor had already supplied me with writing materials, and I had begun to draw up a list of books I might require, which ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... king who had won for himself an assured place among the greatest monarchs of history, "Never," says Froissart, "had there been such a king since the days of Arthur King of Great Britain."[1] Even to his own age his senile degradation pointed the moral of the triumphs of his manhood. The modern historian, who sees, beneath the superficial splendour of the days of Edward III., the misery and degradation that underlay the wreck of the dying Middle Ages, is in no danger of appraising too highly the merits of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... accepted. He was accepted by all classes, by the cultured, and the scholarly, by thoughtful studious leaders and officials of the nation. He was accepted by the great middle classes and by those in lowest scale socially, and by the moral outcasts. Intense Hebrews, Roman officials of high rank, half-breed Samaritans, and men of outside nations group themselves together by their full acceptance ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... contemplated the fire, while picking his teeth with a certain impatience, and still sniffing actively. The girl resented this disregard. But, though she remained hostile to the grotesque old man with his fussy noises, the mantle of Mrs. Maldon's moral protection was now over Councillor Batchgrew, and Rachel's mistrustful scorn of him had lost some ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... sir, come in," said the venerable man, whom Mr. Middleton saw was none other than David O. Crecelius, the capitalist, whose portraits he had seen again and again in the Sunday papers and the weekly papers of a moral and entertaining nature, accompanying accounts of his life and achievements, with exhortations to the youth of the land to imitate them, advice which Mr. Middleton then and there resolved to follow, reflecting upon the impeccable sources from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... atheists of the Psalmist's days to their own bodies for proofs of his intelligence, to their own minds for proofs of his personality, and to their own observation of the judgments of his providence against evil-doers for proofs of his moral government. Our text ascribes for him perception and intelligence: He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? It does not say, he has an eye or an ear, but that he has the knowledge we acquire by those organs. And ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... constantly in all weathers that I had acquired a gipsy lore in the matter of beasts and birds and wild things, I had long, clear, unerring eyesight, which had often stood me in good stead in the time of my father's troubles. Of moral qualities, Heaven forgive me, I fear I thought less; but I believed, though I had been little proved, that I was as courageous as the common ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... possible freedom. He is such a man—so delightful, so distinguished—that you should take pains to make his acquaintance at the earliest possible opportunity. I need hardly mention Bruttius, whom I never allow to leave my side. He is a man of a strict and moral life, as well as being the most delightful company. For in him fun is not divorced from literature and the daily philosophical inquiries which we make in common. I have hired a residence next door ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... with the family gods. Divorce is permitted on sufficient grounds at the instance of either party, being effected before the caste committee or panchayat. If a husband divorces his wife merely on account of bad temper, he must maintain her so long as she remains unmarried and continues to lead a moral life. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... better plaything, for play ought to consist in pleasant exertion which is in itself its object and gain. Play is the toil of a little child; and a ball, which he can throw and run after or catch, trains his eye, gives exercise to his limbs and includes a double moral which men of every age and position should act upon: To look down on the earth and keep his gaze ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... first in oral recitation and then at the hands of scribes), Ireland will see the record of her history, not the history of external facts, but of her soul as it grew into consciousness of personality; as it established in itself love of law, of moral right, of religion, of chivalry, of courtesy in war and daily life; as it rejoiced, and above all, as it suffered and was constant, in suffering and oppression, to ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... camp of 1778-'79 forms a fitting prelude to another feat performed by Old Put, this time a physical one, which, while not so worthy of renown, perhaps, as the great moral victory he achieved over his men, has brought him greater fame. Both taken together absolutely refute the insinuations of his enemies, to the effect that he had suffered a decline of mental, moral, or physical force. Washington wrote, commending him for his action ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... was attempted under circumstances scarcely less discouraging than those under which the brethren were enabled to achieve the moral conquest of Greenland, was attended with incidents still more romantic, and blest with a success equally remarkable. But it possesses a peculiar interest to British readers, having been commenced under the auspices of the ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... to that of younger women. Partial to children, she would join in all our sports, and sit down to play "hunt the slipper," with us and our young companions. But with all her vivacity, she was a strictly moral and religious woman. She could be lenient to indiscretion and carelessness, but any deviation from truth and honesty on the part of my brother or myself, was certain to be visited with severe punishment. She argued, that there could be ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... taffeta or gauze, sometimes flowered with gold, and commonly either blue or purple. About the top a slip of white satin, a foot in breadth, runs all round, on which are painted, in panels, different figures—flower pieces, landscapes, and conversation pieces, interspersed with moral sentences and fables written ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... earnest, the style of his preaching is of little comparative consequence. But the moment he is suspected of being insincere, the moment it is found that he does not practise what he preaches, his power over the rational mind ceases; and to moral feeling such a clergyman becomes an object, not only of contempt, but of disgust and abhorrence. Murmurs were soon heard against the private conduct of the celebrated preacher—perhaps envy for his talents and success mingled her voice with the honest expressions of virtuous ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversified talent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. A serpent transformed into a woman, who beguiles a youth of the highest hopes into amorous languid self-abandonment, is clearly not, in morals, the sort of person ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... nature; the unforced humor, blending so happily with good feeling and good sense, and singularly dashed at times with a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow, and flowing, and softly-tinted style, all seem to bespeak his moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love the man at the same time that we admire the author. While the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more sounding names are suffered to moulder on ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a narrow ridge, close to a steep and slippery descent: the painter's love was falling down it. He regarded his wife as incapable of appreciating the moral considerations which justified him in his own eyes for his singular behavior to her, and believed himself quite innocent in hiding from her thoughts she could not enter into, and peccadilloes outside the jurisdiction of a bourgeois conscience. Augustine wrapped herself in sullen and ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Moral" :   clean, chaste, signification, mental, honorable, moral excellence, meaning, good, immoral, moral certainty, incorrupt, clean-living, virtuous, import, honourable, righteous, significance



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