Moralists Quotes
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When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.
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More Moralists Quotes
We are advised and led along by second-rate moralists who only know how to work themselves into a delirium and pass their illness onto others.
Émile chartier— The Eloquence of Our Passions
Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise have no claim to be serious moralists.
— Stephen R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals, Oxford, 1977, p. 47
The corrupt, when found out, become especially good moralists.
pierre stephen robert payne— The Nature of Human Corruption, p. 88
Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry , manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness.
thomas mann— Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke
I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning.
camille paglia— p. 166 (Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990))
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
bertrand russell— Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism.
Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry, manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness.
— Thomas Mann Death in Venice (1912) Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke
One has said that Christ excelled all other moralists in this, that He puts the padlock not upon the hand, but upon the heart. But He does not use the padlock at all, He renders such a thing unnecessary. He takes the tiger from the heart, and replaces it with the lamb.
— Edward Thomson, p. 491. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
I like to present my characters whether they are in the past or in the future with interesting moral choices, and it seems to me that science-fiction writers are, or should be, the prophets and moralists of today. I am fairly well up on the biological sciences, but I am deeply uninterested in gadgets. A writer's job is to write about people with sympathy and insight.
— Naomi Mitchison, in Anthony Wolk, "Challenge the Boundaries: An Overview of Science Fiction and Fantasy," The English Journal 79 (1990), p. 27.
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
bertrand russell— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism.
The modern moralists extol … the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.
julien benda— Treason of the Intellectuals (1927, p. 146)
Cynics are all moralists, and merciless too.
indro montanelli— from L'Italia giacobina e carbonara, Rizzoli, Milano 1972, p. 144
