Quotes about Morality
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
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
— Henry David Thoreau
What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
— Henry David Thoreau
When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
— Henry David Thoreau
Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.
— Henry David Thoreau
If man looks within himself he must perceive two things: a law of right, and that which it condemns.
— Henry Parry Liddon
Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.
— Henry Ward Beecher