"Moral excellence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which the source of the emotion is traced. Various matters may, no doubt, increase the pleasure of the emotion without occasioning it. Of this nature are the vividness and force of the ideas awakened in our imagination, the moral excellence of the suffering persons, the reference to himself of the person feeling pity. I admit that the suffering of a weak soul, and the pain of a wicked character, do not procure us this enjoyment. But this is because they do not excite our pity to the same degree as the hero who suffers, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... minds are capable of forming; and this word is Ineffable, because one man cannot communicate to another his own conception of Deity; since every man's conception of God must be proportioned to his mental cultivation, and intellectual powers, and moral excellence. God is, as man conceives Him, the reflected image of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child,—all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... cruel, tests. They submit to every thing with unmurmuring sweetness and humility. The true lesson of these charming stories is, that an inexhaustible self-abnegation and obedience forms the most heavenly trait and power of human nature. But it is a perversion to limit the application to woman. Moral excellence is the same in man as in woman. It is an outrage to make that meek submission to wrong, which shows so divinely in her, a duty; and it is equally an outrage to make that autocratic authority of man over woman, which he so complacently assumes, a right. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... calculated to strengthen their minds, they only exert themselves to give their defects a graceful covering, which may serve to heighten their charms in the eye of the voluptuary, though it sink them below the scale of moral excellence? ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... but one step—heavenward. And in my own case—the intellectual character was associated with all that is lofty in principle, and exalted in conduct. Sans peur et sans reproche was its fit motto. Falsehood and dishonesty must not attach to it. In my own mind I pictured a moral excellence which it was necessary to attain; and in my strivings for intellectual fame, that, as the essential accompaniment, was never once lost sight of. Pride still clung to me—and was fed throughout. I was eighteen years of age, and I desired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... in the imminence of an overturn that should make all things new, he was not checked by any divided allegiance, by any sense that he was straying into the vapid or fanciful, when he created what he justly calls "Beautiful idealisms of moral excellence." ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... unsatisfactory; for what is meant is not moral excellence, either in the wider sense or in the narrower to which, in reference to woman, that great word has been unfortunately narrowed. Our colloquialism 'a woman of faculty' would fairly convey the idea, which is that of ability and general capacity. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by their conversation, from frequently overhearing what passes between the Lady, and not only one but several of their R.H.'s. I will give you an infallible guide to a Royal conversation. Stupidity for its basis, an ignorance of intellectual merit for one prop, and a contempt of moral excellence for the other; witticisms, double entendres, mimickry, and every species of oaths that any English gentleman ever made use of for the fond; as a whole you may call it double refined folly and ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... use the Scriptures as a means of instruction in religious truth and Christian duty, and as a means of improvement in all moral excellence and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... for the gods, do not seem to have supposed any part of their duty to the gods to consist in keeping their bodies untainted. Exquisite as was their sense of beauty, of beauty of mind as well as beauty of form, with all their loftiness and their nobleness, with their ready love of moral excellence when manifested, as fortitude, or devotion to liberty and to home, they had little or no idea of what we mean by morality. With a few rare exceptions, pollution, too detestable to be even named among ourselves, was of familiar and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... mean countenance, with a snub nose, projecting eyes, and otherwise of an appearance so unpromising, that a physiognomist, his contemporary, pronounced him to be given to the grossest vices. But he was of a penetrating understanding, the simplest manners, and a mind wholly bent on the study of moral excellence. He at once abjured all the lofty pretensions, and the dark and recondite pursuits of the most applauded teachers of his time, and led those to whom he addressed his instructions from obvious and irresistible ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... and pious character of the new bishop, the growing reputation, and rising honours of his son, she mistook the appearance of moral excellence for moral excellence itself, and felt her own unworthiness even to become the supplicant of those ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and imposing processions,—in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate the senses. The gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "Heaven was so near at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." Every grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its presiding deity; while every wonder of Nature,—the sun, the moon, the stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,—was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Lulu, as she looked at them. But she did not know what she wished. Certainly it was for no moral excellence, for she perceived none. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale |
