The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Mark Twain5 quotes
Prosperity is the best protector of principle. — Mark Twain · 1897Principles have no real force except when one is well fed. — Mark Twain · 1893Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. — Mark Twain · 1896To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. — Mark Twain · 1896Be good and you will be lonesome. — Mark Twain · 1897Edmund Burke3 quotes
By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. — Edmund Burke · 1790Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist. — Edmund Burke · 1777There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity, — the Law of Nature and of Nations. — Edmund Burke · 1794Daniel Defoe2 quotes
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination. — Daniel Defoe · 1722Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And as they change, are virtues made or crimes. — Daniel Defoe · 1703Friedrich Nietzsche2 quotes
The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1887Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882Oliver Goldsmith2 quotes
Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1770Oscar Wilde2 quotes
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Albert Camus1 quote
What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport. — Albert Camus · 1979Aldous Huxley1 quote
The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced. — Aldous Huxley · 1937Alexis de Tocqueville1 quote
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835Alfred North Whitehead1 quote
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1941Bertolt Brecht1 quote
Food comes first, then morals. — Bertolt Brecht · 1928Brandon1 quote
Good and evil, right and wrong were invented for the ordinary average man, the inferior man, because he needs them. — Brandon · 1948Captain Benjamin L. Willard1 quote
I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring. — Captain Benjamin L. Willard · 1979Charlotte Bronte1 quote
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. — Charlotte Bronte · 1848Cicero1 quote
There exists a law, inborn of our hearts by natural intuition, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. — Cicero · 52 BCEdward Gibbon1 quote
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery. — Edward Gibbon · 1781Francis Hutcheson1 quote
That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. — Francis Hutcheson · 1725G.K. Chesterton1 quote
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. — G.K. Chesterton · 1917God1 quote
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. — God · 570 BCGustave Flaubert1 quote
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880Hermann Busenbaum1 quote
The end justifies the means. — Hermann Busenbaum · 1650Honore de Balzac1 quote
Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities. — Honore de Balzac · 1842Immanuel Kant1 quote
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant · 1788Jane Austen1 quote
We do not look in great cities for our best morality. — Jane Austen · 1814Jean-Jacques Rousseau1 quote
Censorship is crucial for preserving morals but useless for restoring them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762Jeremy Bentham1 quote
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832Jim Casy1 quote
Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say. — Jim Casy · 1940Juvenal1 quote
No one ever suddenly became depraved. — Juvenal · 127Learned Hand1 quote
Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution. — Learned Hand · 1945Leo Tolstoy1 quote
There can be only one permanent revolution-a moral one. — Leo Tolstoy · 1900