Best moral & form Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In a world of democracies, the most deserving basis of national differences is that the different states of the world should represent a form of moral specialisation within humanity.”

World Should Different States Form Humanity Differences Moral Democracy Bases Deserving

Author:Roberto Unger

“The man who has struggled bravely with the passions of the body, has fought ably against unclean spirits, and has expelled from his soul the conceptual images they provoke, should pray for a pure heart to be given him and for a spirit of integrity to be renewed within him (cf. Ps. 51:10). In other words, he should pray that by grace he may be completely emptied of evil thoughts and filled with divine thoughts, so that he may become a spiritual world of God, splendid and vast, wrought from moral, natural and theological forms of contemplation.”

“If you expound the teaching of the Logos from the standpoint of the moral life, using materialistic words and examples which correspond to the capacity of your hearers, you make the Logos flesh. Conversely, if you elucidate mystical theology by means of the higher forms of contemplation you make the Logos spirit.”

Ifs Mean Christian Form Spirit Moral Teaching Example Higher Capacity Flesh Theology Contemplation Orthodox Mystical Standpoint Materialistic Logos Moral Life

Author:Maximus the Confessor

“The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.”

Different War Form Turns Decision Situation Moral Issues Military Battle Degrees Constant Factors Wars And Battles

Book:Why Don't We Learn from History?

Source: Why Don't We Learn from History?

“My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.”

Form Moral Danger Words Of Wisdom Daughter Bravery Hardest Flight My Daughter Resolution Heroic Virtuous

Book:Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

Source: Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].

“The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.”

Form Animal Beauty Moral Virtue Amount Intellectual Proportion

Book:Of ideas of beauty

Source: Of ideas of beauty

“Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.”

“So erst the Sage [Pythagoras] with scientific truth In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth; With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass From life to life, a transmigrating mass; How the same organs, which to-day compose The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose, May with to-morrow's sun new forms compile, Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile. Whence drew the enlighten'd Sage the moral plan, That man should ever be the friend of man; Should eye with tenderness all living forms, His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.”

Men Should May Eye Form Science Moral Sun Plans Youth Taught Brother Hero Mass Rose Temples Atoms Organs Tenderness Sage Worms Restless Enlightening Morrow Poisonous Scientific Truth

Author:Erasmus Darwin

“Religion, charity, pure benevolence, and morals, mingled up with superstitious rites and ferocious cruelty, form in their combination institutions the most powerful and the most pernicious that have ever afflicted mankind.”

Form Powerful Moral Mankind Pure Institutions Charity Cruelty Combination Most Powerful Benevolence Superstitious Rite Pernicious

Book:John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1821-1848

Source: John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1821-1848

“An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of the idea of God.”

Source: Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms

“We started off with physical evolution and got our form. Then we somehow developed language, which meant cultural evolution could race so we could change our behavior really quickly instead of over hundreds and hundreds of years. And then comes moral evolution, which means we're not frightfully far along with people. And maybe we end up with a spiritual evolution, which is this connectedness with the rest of the life forms on the planet.”

People Years Mean Ends Spiritual Form Language Race Moral Planets Evolution Behavior Connectedness Spiritual Evolution

Author:Jane Goodall

“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”

Believe May Form Moral Teach Teaching Stage Tests Endure Casts Currents Dramatic Instruction Righteous Obliged Mold Simulate

Book:Twenty Years at Hull House

Source: Twenty Years at Hull House

“And last of all we have the secondary forms of crystals bursting in upon us, and sparkling in the rigidity of mathematical necessity and telling us, neither of harmony of design, usefulness or moral significance, nothing but spherical trigonometry and Napier's analogies. It is because we have blindly excluded the lessons of these angular bodies from the domain of human knowledge that we are still in doubt about the great doctrine that the only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.”

Source: The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862

“This is what evolution means--ordered progress; development from poorer to richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater--progress. In the material universe, progress to higher forms; in the moral universe, progress to higher life.”

Mean Form Universe Moral Greater Progress Materials Development Evolution Higher

Book:The Life that Really is

Source: The Life that Really is

“The discussion of the game of marbles seems to have led us into rather deep waters. But in the eyes of children the history of the game of marbles has quite as much importance as the history of religion or of forms of government. It Is a history, moreover, that is magnificently spontaneous; and it was therefore perhaps not entirely useless to seek to throw light on the child's judgment of moral value by a preliminary study of the social behaviour of children amongst themselves.”

“By consequence I hold that no one ever did, or can do, anything for "society."... Comte invented the term altruism as an antonym for egoism, and it found its way at once into everyone's mouth, although it is utterly devoid of meaning, since it points to nothing that ever existed in mankind; This hybrid or rather this degenerate form of hedonism served powerfully to invest collectivism's principles with a specious moral sanction, and collectivists naturally made the most of it.”

Way Made Form Found Term Can Do Moral Principles Mankind Mouths Consequence Altruism Sanctions Egoism Collectivism Degenerates Hybrid Hedonism

Author:Albert J. Nock

“For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.”

Source: Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations

“The most important form of incremental change is the decision by the individual to become vegan. Veganism, or the eschewing of all animal products, is more than a matter of diet or lifestyle; it is a political and moral statement in which the individual accepts the principle of abolition in her own life. Veganism is the one truly abolitionist goal that we can all achieve - and we can achieve it immediately, starting with our next meal.”

“There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on a fundamental truth. When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.”

Source: Concerning the spiritual in art

“We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.”

May Whole Form Moral Conception

Book:A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice

“From the perspective of the one committing suicide, his or her act can be one of the most perverse forms of moral manipulation, as it abandons those left behind to their shame, guilt, and grief. Suicide is something like a metaphysical "I gotcha!" It is often an attempt to kill or wound others.”

Form Left Grief Behinds Moral Perspective Shame Suicide Guilt Wounds Abandon Manipulation Metaphysical Left Behind Committing Suicide

Book:The Hauerwas Reader

Source: The Hauerwas Reader

“Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form.”

Form Moral Code Tablets Moral Code

Author:Christopher Hitchens

“Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence.”

Men Wells Character Christian Form Existence Moral He Man Intellectual Letters Immortality Portions Hereafter Moral Character

Author:Robert Southey

“Drunkenness is not only the cause of crime, but it is crime; and if any encourage drunkenness for the sake of the profit derived from the sale of drink, they are guilty of a form of moral assassination as criminal as any that has ever been practiced by the braves of any country or of any age.”

Ifs Country Age Form Causes Moral Crime Drink Brave Sake Profit Criminals Guilty Drunkenness Assassination

Author:John Ruskin

“There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David.”

“domestic work is the most elementary form of labor. It is suitable for those with the intelligence of rabbits. All it requires is cleanlines, tidiness and quickness - not moral or intellectual qualities at all, but merely the outward and visible signs of health.”

Form Quality Moral Intellectual Labor Visible Rabbits Suitable Housework Quickness

Book:The young Rebecca: writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17

Source: The young Rebecca: writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17

“A long-established occupation may form the very foundations of the moral life, that the art with which a man has solaced his toil may be the salvation of his uncertain temperament.”

Men May Long Art Form Moral Foundation Salvation Occupation Uncertain Toil Temperament Moral Life

Book:Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes

“Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage.”

Knows Giving Wells May Art Form Moral Struggle Resources Advantage Bases Foundation Covered Transparent True Beauty

Author:Victor Cousin

“Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself.”

People Men World Doe Different Spiritual Form Life Is Night Moral Opinion Divine Regard Spiritual Life Inward Good Night Diving Moral Life

Author:Emanuel Swedenborg

“Horace Dinsmore was, like his father, an upright, moral man, who paid an outward respect to the forms of religion, but cared nothing for the vital power of godliness.”

Men Form Religion Father Moral Paid Godliness Power Of God

Book:ELSIE DINSMORE Complete Collection – 28 Timeless Children Classics in One Premium Edition: Elsie Dinsmore, Elsie's Holidays at Roselands, Elsie's Girlhood, Elsie's Womanhood, Elsie Yachting with the Raymonds, Elsie's Motherhood, Christmas with Grandma Elsie…

Source: ELSIE DINSMORE Complete Collection – 28 Timeless Children Classics in One Premium Edition: Elsie Dinsmore, Elsie's Holidays at Roselands, Elsie's Girlhood, Elsie's Womanhood, Elsie Yachting with the Raymonds, Elsie's Motherhood, Christmas with Grandma Elsie…

“Sex is an aspect of human existence that has fallen prey in special measure to a very special form of theological science: the theological outgrowth or offshoot known as moral theology. Its biblical foundations are meager in the sense that nothing of the kind exists in the New Testament, so it has had to achieve its ambition largely by dint of its own efforts.”

Humans Kind Form Sex Effort Existence Known Moral Achieve Special Ambition Aspect Foundation Theology Fallen Biblical Testament Prey New Testament Human Existence Theological

Author:Uta Ranke-Heinemann

“It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; "good/evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency, ... simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.”

Needs Mean Persons Long Might Action Form Evil Results Moral Trump Europe Simplicity Priorities Appeals Assumption Dimensions Aesthetic Efficiency Assessment Evaluation Good Evil Assessing

Author:Raymond Geuss

“A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on a Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.”

May Form Law Games Decision Views Effort Moral Decided Court Golf Sunday

Author:Bill Vaughan

“Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.”

Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases

“problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test.”

“If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.”

Ifs Looks Mean Art Action Form Emotion Quality Moral Virtue Intellectual Concerned Dues Excess Accurate Hitting Deficiency Craftsman Moral Virtues If Then

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“I would define morality as enlightened self-interest...That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just isn't where we are.”

Self Form Certain Interest Moral Morality Pure Ideals Manners Enlightened Self Interest Platonic

Author:Andrew Young

“The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.”

Source: J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings

“America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.”

Knows Kind Long Has Beens Country Bigs Might America Form Moral Long Time Capitalism Impulse Contradiction Aggressive Consumerism Civics

Author:David Foster Wallace

“So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination.”

People Humans Spiritual Form Law Courses Black Human Beings Moral Issues Rights Personality Genuine Discrimination Civil Rights Black People Items Symbolic Cosmetics

Author:Cornel West

“New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.”

Men Giving Made Said Different Form Moral Expression Morality Concern Invention Nothing New New Inventions

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.”

Form Certain Values Games Moral Criticism Regard Lowest Hierarchy Moral Values Rhyming Inventiveness

Book:The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

“The adolescent frequently supposes that she is breaking out of the confines of her mundane, schoolgirl existence simply in order to break rules and defy authority. . . . She rids herself of the "oughts" and "musts" that convert every minor infraction into a sin of omission or commission. It certainly does not occur to her or to her family that by questioning the moral standards she erected as a child she is taking the first steps in her journey toward a firmer, more reasonable, less harsh, more ethical form of conscience.”

Firsts Children Doe Form Order Sin Existence Moral Steps Break Journey Authority Standards Conscience Reasonable Ethical First Steps Questioning Minors Adolescence Harsh Mundane Omission

Author:Louise J. Kaplan

“A man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is beautiful: it strikes at first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things, so also is there analogous to it a beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eye perceiveth the one, so the mind doth by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty, is ever quickest and purest in the noblest minds.”

Source: Alciphron: Or, The Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion Against Those who are Called Free-thinkers

“If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign tous: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?”

Ifs Mind Form Results Beauty Moral Influence Effects Industry Morality Reflection Fairs Senses Contemplation Delightful

Author:David Hume

“The religious habits of the Americans form not only the basis of their private and public morals, but have become so thoroughly interwoven with their whole course of legislation that it would be impossible to change them without affecting the very essence of their government.”

Whole Government Would Be Christian Form Courses Religious Moral Impossible Habit Essence Bases Legislation

Book:Americans

Source: Americans

“Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and a meaningful expression through which the personality of the artist andthe broad outlook of a group are visible,... communicating and fixing certain values of religious, social, and moral life through the emotional suggestiveness of forms. It is, besides, a common ground against which innovations and individuality of particular works may be measured.”