Morality quotes

Discover profound and thought-provoking quotes on morality, exploring the ethics that guide our choices and actions. Gain wisdom and insights into the principles of right and wrong, as we navigate the complex moral landscapes of life.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.

- Immanuel Kant

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

- Immanuel Kant

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

- Immanuel Kant

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

- Jean de la Bruyere

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

- Immanuel Kant

A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.

- Xun Zi

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

- Iris Murdoch

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

- Aesop

Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.

- Jean de la Bruyere

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

- Aesop

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

- Jean de la Bruyere

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

- Jean de la Bruyere

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

- H. L. Mencken

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

- William Bennett

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.

- Aleister Crowley

People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable.

- Joseph Butler

Morality is not only taught; it is caught.

- Neil Kurshan

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

- Immanuel Kant

Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown.

- Joseph Butler

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

- Jean de la Bruyere

Human nature refers to what is in people but which they cannot study or work at achieving.

- Xun Zi

The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else.

- Joseph Butler

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

- George Bernard Shaw

Whether the gentleman is capable or not, he is loved all the same; conversely the petty man is loathed all the same.

- Xun Zi

But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.

- Iris Murdoch

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.

- William Ralph Inge

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

- Joseph Butler

My parents were pretty lenient with me. But, they gave me morality while I was growing up. They taught me the difference between right and wrong.

- Mark Hoppus

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

- Jean de la Bruyere

Put your shoulder to the wheel.

- Aesop