#moral

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935) ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#artists #falsification #gain #greed #honesty

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#humor #life #morals #humor

Elle est retrouvée! -Quoi? -l'Éternité. C'est la mer mêlée Au soleil. Je devins un opéra fabuleux : je vis que tous les êtres ont une fatalité de bonheur : l'action n'est pas la vie, mais une façon de gâcher quelque force, un énervement. La morale est la faiblesse du cerveau. À chaque être, plusieurs autres vies me semblaient dues. Ce monsieur ne sait pas ce qu'il fait : il est un ange. ↗

— Arthur Rimbaud

#life #morality #life

An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental. ↗

— Richard Russo

#morality #life

Hélène slowly surveyed the room. In this respectable society, amongst these apparently decent middle-class people, were there none but faithless wives? With her strict provincial morality, she was amazed at the licensed promiscuity of Parisian life. ↗

— Émile Zola

#morality #paris #life

Life was indeed cruel; but it was better to glorify the Will than deny it. ↗

— John Gray

#morality #nietzsche #schopenhauer #straw-dogs #will

Only when there are things a man will not do is he capable of doing great things. ↗

— Mencius

#limitations #morality #men

It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#ethics #evil #morality #renunciation #stoic

Saer is a great big poop, and you shouldn't listen to anything he says," I said, panting just a little. "Obviously, he was trying to demoralize me." "Men who are poops demoralize people all the time," I agreed ↗

— Katie MacAlister

#demoralize #vampires #men

Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men. ↗

— Voltaire

#morality #religion #sects #men