morals quotes

   Les vices, les abus, voila'   ce qui ne change point, mais se de  guise en mille formes sous le masque des moeurs dominantes: leur arracher ce masque et les montrer a' de  couvert, telle est la noble ta"  che de l'homme qui se voue au the  a"  tre. Vices, indulgences, these are the things which never change but which disguise themselves in a thousand forms beneath the mask of prevailing morals: to lift off this mask and expose them, this is the noble taskof the person who devotes himself to the theatre.

- Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
  Le Mariage de Figaro, pre  face.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. See Hutcheson 424:52.

-Jeremy Bentham
  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch.1.

   Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral. Food comes first, then morals.

- Bertolt Eugen Friedrich Brecht
  Die Dreigroschenoper ('The Threepenny Opera'), act 2, sc.3 (translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willett,1970).

The morals of a baboon and the guts of a butterfly.

-Truman Capote
Of Kenneth Tynan. Quoted in Gerald Clarke Capote (1988).

O tempora, o mores! What times! what morals!

-Cicero full name MarcusTullius Cicero
Favourite phrase, used on various occasions. See In Catilinam 1.1, In Verrem 4.25 and Pro rege Deiotaro 11.31.

What we call morals is simply blind obedience to words of command.

- Havelock Ellis
  The Dance of Life.

Les mouvements les plus naturels, et les plus ordinaires, sont ceux qui se font le moins sentir; cela est vrai jusque dans la morale. Le mouvement de l'amour-propre nous est si naturel que, le plus souvent, nous ne le sentons pas. The most natural and ordinary movements are those which are the least felt; this is also true in morals.Pride is so natural to us that, most often, we never feel it.

- Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
  Entretiens sur la pluralite   des mondes, Premier soir.

Sportsmanship, next to the Church, is the greatest teacher of morals.

- Herbert Clark Hoover
Quoted in  John Rickards Betts  America's Sporting Heritage: 1850^1950 (1974).

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Of LordChesterfield's letters. Quotedin JamesBoswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to producethe reverse of happiness.

-John Stuart Mill
  Utilitarianism, ch.2.

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

- Les(lie Allan) Murray
  'The Sublime and the Good'.

'Have you no morals, man?' 'Can't afford them,Governor.'

- George Bernard Shaw
  Col Pickering and Alfred Doolittle. Pygmalion, act 2.

   She was neither clear-sighted nor accurate; and in her attempts to describe morals, manners, and even facts, was unable to avoid the pitfalls of exaggeration.

- Anthony Trollope
  Of his mother, FrancesTrollope, author of The Domestic Manners of theAmericans. Autobiography, ch.2.