Quotes about Morality
A man only has a soul to be won or lost.
— Paulo Coelho
A bad man becomes worse when he apes a saint.
— Publilius Syrus
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible with the liberty of every other man.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
— Henry David Thoreau
Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?
— Henry David Thoreau
There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
— Henry David Thoreau
If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.
— Henry David Thoreau