Quotes about Morality

War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.

One does not cross-examine a saint.

No man was created good by God, nor can be made entirely bad by man.

To be wicked does not insure prosperity.

There is one thing sadder than to see one's children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.

Sin as little as possible - that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly tings are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity.

The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels in proportion as the fortress is the less menaced.

In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall see. Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to Caesar is never anything but the remnants of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.

with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means.

The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end." Volume V, Book I, Chapter XX This

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing morality on the stomach.

had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams, than according to what he thinks.