A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (1850)
Context: The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtle combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds, — all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. <!-- p. 35
“The nature of morality must be considered, and preferably before one is exposed to situations where a moral decision is required.”
Jasnah Kholin
The Way of Kings (2010)
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Brandon Sanderson 313
American fantasy writer 1975Related quotes
“To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.”
Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Ch. 3 : Freedom and Liberation]
Variant: To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice
Source: The Ethics of Ambiguity
Context: To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice; hence, freedom takes a positive and constructive step which causes being to pass to existence in a movement which is constantly surpassed.
“A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.”
Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Tabu Homosexualität - Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils (1978; reprinted in 1981 as Homosexualität - Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils), p. 321.
Tabu Homosexualität (1978)
Context: Wherever people prefer to call upon "offenses against moral sentience", upon "moral terms" rather than adhere to one's rationally derived scientific criminological approach [dividing irrational, ethnocentric "moral offenses" from actual crimes], one is fully justified in speaking of prejudice's total victory over reason.
“MORAL: If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.”
The Fable of the General Manager of the Love Affair Who Demanded a Furlough http://books.google.com/books?id=2_ssAAAAYAAJ&q=%22MORAL+If+it+were+not+for+the+presents+an+elopement+would+be+preferable%22&pg=PA218#v=onepage, Forty Modern Fables (1901)
Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 1
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit.
Precisely because moral culture is the aim, we cannot be content merely to lift the mass of mankind above the grosser forms of evil. We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known.
To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim.
We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them.
“Every economic decision has a moral consequence.”
2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)
The Influence of Literature upon Society (1800), Pt. 2, ch. 5