#oral

As readers, we are seldom interested in the fine sentiments of a lesson learnt; we seldom care about the good manners of morals. Repentance puts an end to conversation; forgiveness becomes the stuff of moralistic tracts. Revenge - bloodthirsty, justice-hungry revenge - is the very essence of romance, lying at the heart of much of the best fiction. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#forgiveness #morals #readers #repentance #revenge

I don't know what London's coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals. ↗

— Noël Coward

#buildings #cities #london #morality #skyscrapers

Never let the sacrifice of others be for nothing by doing nothing. ↗

— L.M. Fields

#morality #patriotic #freedom

So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous, yes. They can do harm, yes. But they're not evil. They're beneath our morality, if you will, like any animal. Or beyond it. They have nothing to do with it. We must choose and choose again. The animals need only be and do. We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom... ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#choice #good-and-evil #morality #freedom

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#fiction #god #life #literature #love

Nursery-rhyme morality has gotten me into no end of trouble, largely because it is presented through such fine poetry. Nursery rhymes dramatize the eternal conflict between aesthetics and ethics in a manner that every child can appreciate. There isn’t an adult walking around today that hasn’t been psychologically devastated by them. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #morality #nursery-rhymes #poetry

But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house". The moral of 'Snow White' is "Never eat apples". The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#morals #home

We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us. ↗

— John Locke

#character #color #hue #like #moral

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#dark-humor #dragons #morality #humor

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#double-standards #gender #hypocrisy #immorality #men