"Moral obligation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighborhood, the church, the trade or profession, the political party, the social class—all these have their habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a sense of moral obligation. Naturally, individuals with different affiliations will be sensible of the pressure in different ways, and may differ widely in their conceptions of the obligations actually laid upon the individual by the will of the greater ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... sense, or of the ordinary critical faculties; that the true, the beautiful, and the good, are perceived by it in their absolute, unlimited essence; and that the revelation of the infinite is the basis of all intellectual truth, of all moral obligation, and offers the clue to the criticism of religion, the solution of the problems of history, and the construction of a philosophy of the universe. Its chief effect on literature, the permanent contribution ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... distinct quality, yet his intimates cannot explain the reason of their obedience to him. After a brief acquaintance he is revealed as the very soul of insincerity—he "works" his friends, he pays toll to his enemies, he frankly shows himself without the sense of moral obligation. I believe his talent resides in his capacity to select the proper type of man to "make rich" in the illicit schemes his abnormal mind conceives. These coworkers of his are of different grades; some have ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and I beg the House not to be led away by the fear of trifling complications following upon our insisting, not upon anything new, but upon that which we have been insisting upon for years past in a matter in which our moral obligation is ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... let him not be incoherent. That would be extremely unpleasant. It was like people talking in their sleep; they always frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that, taking very high ground as regards the moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet until she should have confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for Madame de Cintre that ...
— The American • Henry James
... altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of private means, and even those who can, by abstinence, reduce the necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the more liberty, have only the higher moral obligation to be up and doing ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as they are," he admitted dryly. "Then the side that loses will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will be less. Besides, stealing ore openly doesn't count. It is really a moral obligation in a fight ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... have not been willing, after having created this model hospital, that some day through lack of support its doors should close and the wounded you have taken in be turned over to others; certainly those first subscribers undertook a sort of moral obligation to themselves not to permit the work to fail. But, none the less, it is admirable that it should be so. To give once is something, but it is little if one compares the value of the first gift to those ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in the presence of one whom we take into so close a relation. Between us there never can exist the conjugal relation, for we are to each other but as brother and sister. Long have I struggled with my sense of duty and moral obligation, and the struggle has done me good. I have found that my life could not come into fulness, or my being unfold its powers while a relation not of my ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... between the languages and usages of the natives and ours, the mind was almost lost in amazement. Whatever might be the wish of a British parliament to enlarge the rights and foster the interests of British citizens, there could be but one feeling as to the moral obligation which we had incurred to promote the improvement of these distant subjects, so far as the feelings, the institutions, and the prejudices of that country would allow. In the list of the committee proposed by Mr. Peel there were the names of three or four East India directors. Messrs. Hume ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of Athens? Could they hope that the precepts of philosophy should direct the life, and control the passions, of a despot, whose infancy had been taught to consider his absolute and fluctuating will as the only rule of moral obligation? [46] The studies of Chosroes were ostentatious and superficial: but his example awakened the curiosity of an ingenious people, and the light of science was diffused over the dominions of Persia. [47] At Gondi Sapor, in the neighborhood ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... policy of the Chinese empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure upon it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position which he had previously laid down, that commercial intercourse between nations is a moral obligation ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... that without a God, there can be no moral obligation; that it is necessary for men and for the sovereigns themselves to have a lawgiver sufficiently powerful to compel them to be moral; moral obligation implies a law; but this law arises from the eternal and necessary ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... that Mr. Bryan would not accept the post of Secretary of State, for even at that time everybody who was in the know was already aware that Mr. Wilson could only tolerate subordinates and not men with opinions of their own. Mr. Bryan, however, felt the moral obligation, at least to attempt to give his radical views a chance of succeeding, and declared, as he took over the post, that so long as he was Secretary of State the United States would never go to war. He even wanted this ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... in passing, to remark on the shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to be met with in certain quarters, which, whilst admitting all that can be said as to the destruction for us of any moral obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the variety of moral distinctions. 'Each moment,' says Mr. Pater for instance, 'some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement, is irresistibly ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... to Decisions a Moral Obligation.—In 1866 Dr. Krauth, defending the polity of the General Council, wrote in the Lutheran and Missionary: "We entirely agree with our friend in the Lutheraner that the strength of the Church does not depend upon a 'strong government,' but on the unity of faith, doctrine, and confession. ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... of the same principles with our late reformers? The vanity of this pretense will further appear, by comparing their principles with the Solemn League and Covenant, with every article of which they are inconsistent. They profess the moral obligation of the covenants, and yet at the same time maintain the lawfulness of every providential government, whether popish or prelatic, if set up by the body politic. But how opposite this to the first article, obliging constantly to endeavor the preservation ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... (De Legibus Naturae, 1672) turns to experience with the questions, In what does morality consist? Whence does it arise? and What is the nature of moral obligation? and finds these answers: Those actions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, which promote the common good (commune bonum summa lex). Individual welfare must be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part. The psychological ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... energetic speakers and writers sometimes use 'I' as representative of mankind at large. Thus: 'The current impressions received through the senses are not voluntary in origin. What I see in walking is seen because I have an organ of vision.' The question of general moral obligation is forcibly stated by Paley in the individual form, 'Why am I obliged to keep my word?' It is sometimes well to confine the attention of the hearer or reader to his own relation to the matter under consideration, more especially in difficult or non-popular argument or exposition. The speaker, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in my political or scientific theories. But I do mean that I think I am right; and that, if I am right, you cannot also be right when you affirm that this same action is wrong. This objective validity is the very core and centre of the idea of Duty or moral obligation. That is why it is so important to assert that moral judgements are the work of Reason, not of a supposed moral sense or any other kind of feeling. Feelings may vary in different men without any of them being in the wrong; red really is the same as ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... ultimate expression of the senses of these things is money. There is the chiefest disgrace. We are not worse than the old nations, but we have a right to be very much better; we have the obligation to be better, the unchanging moral obligation which lies upon every man to use the advantage he has. We alone among nations are free, we alone among nations inhabit a quarter of the world by ourselves, and live and grow great in our own way with no thought of the rest. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the Supreme Being, consonant to my own ideas of his agency and perfections; and those who are of opinion that my notions are erroneous, must allow, that he who does what he thinks to be right, and abstains from what he thinks to be wrong, acquits himself equally of moral obligation, whether his opinions are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... a matter of high moral obligation, if not of necessity, for me to attend the Coles and Edwards courts. I have some cases in both of them, in which the parties have my promise, and are depending upon me. The court commences in Coles on the second Monday, and in Edgar on the third. Your court in Morgan commences on the fourth ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... lying advertisements, do more to encourage abortion than even the professional abortionists themselves? There seems to be but one remedy: Speed the time when in their acceptance of advertising those publishers who fail to recognize decency as a moral obligation may be forced by public opinion to recognize its ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... is confined at Gaud in Spain. Securing a copy of the Scriptures he reads it, and, after his release, becomes the enthusiastic leader of the Hu gue nots of France. They represent the most moral, industrious and intelligent of the French people, but those who love the "Mass", which involves no moral obligation, hate them on account of their chaste and devout lives. In 1572, when a bloody persecution arises against them, they begin to emigrate to England, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and the Colonies ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... sols," the lawyer said. "We don't want to be tightfisted. After all, you fought a gang of pirates and lost some men and a couple of boats; we have some moral obligation to you. But you'll have to realize that this ship, in her present ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Then, too, one must keep up connections. It's a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, there's one's own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent member; they're not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These gentlemen, now, what do they come for?" he said, pointing to the malignant ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to give her money. But, unluckily, she belonged to a society pledged not to give alms in the streets, and her sense of the power of a moral obligation was a strong notion of duty, which had descended to her from her Puritan ancestors. There was one ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... demonology which constitutes an inseparable part of their teaching; and to profess belief in a Supernaturalism as gross as that of any primitive people—it is at any rate permissible to ask why? Science may be unable to define the limits of possibility, but it cannot escape from the moral obligation to weigh the evidence in favour of any alleged wonderful occurrence; and I have endeavoured to show that the evidence for the Gadarene miracle is altogether worthless. We have simply three, partially ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... simply from the fact that, being courts of law, they must give to litigants before them the law; and the Constitution of the United States is law, and not, like most European political constitutions, a collection of rules and principles having only a moral obligation upon the legislative and executive departments of the government. Accordingly, each litigant, having the right to the highest law, may appeal from a statute of Congress, or any other act of any officer or department, State or national, and invoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... so abhorrent to any man of honour, failed to arouse any indignation among the plain people. On the contrary the plain people viewed them as, in some vague way, smart and creditable, and as, in any case, thoroughly justified by the superior moral obligation ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... respect for his laws, and to worship no other God but him. But slavery sets all these at naught and hurls defiance in the face of Jehovah. The forlorn condition in which you are placed does not destroy your moral obligation to God. You are not certain of Heaven, because you suffer yourselves to remain in a state of slavery, where you cannot obey the commandments of the Sovereign of the universe. If the ignorance of slavery is a passport to heaven, then it is a blessing, and no curse, and you should rather ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in my power to show strong reasons ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... us, because we see in her more of the conflict between passion and moral obligation, which is the essence of drama. Her scornful rejection of the advances of Monsieur (II, ii), though her husband palliates his conduct as that of "a bachelor and a courtier, I, and a prince," proves that she is no light o' love, and that her surrender to Bussy is the ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... spiritual duties. But then all human obligations have a spiritual side, by the fact of their being obligations. Thus, labor is not, like attendance at mass, a spiritual necessity; but to provide for those who are dependent upon us is a moral obligation and to shirk it would be a ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... after generation have lived in luxury on the income wrung from these poor creatures in the shape of Rent, without ever giving them a helping hand or a kind word in return—without even suspecting that they were under moral obligation to do so. Here is a Priesthood, the conscience-keepers and religious instructors of this fortunate class, who also have fared sumptuously and amassed wealth out of the tithes wrenched by law-sanctioned robbery ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... visited the house, offered to use antitoxin, which was refused, and instructed quarantine. The mother and one daughter died, and the healer was imprisoned for entering the house in defiance of the quarantine law. This case illustrates how the moral obligation may be distinctly repudiated because of religious prejudice. But even religious belief must be subservient to the laws governing the community in which a man chooses to live, and, so long as the residence ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... a wider field, this devoted and courageous missionary had the happiness of seeing a chapel, parsonage, and school-house standing on "the sequestered land" of her forest friends, and had thus partially repaid the debt of social and moral obligation to a tribe who fed the first and famishing settlers in Connecticut, who strove to protect them against the tomahawk of inimical tribes, and whose whoop was friendly to freedom when British ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... accustomed to the sound and sight of a gun being fired, first at a distance and gradually nearer and nearer, until he knows that no harm will come to him. Companionship and sympathy between dog and master is the beginning and end of the whole business, and there is a moral obligation between them which ought ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... without employing one hour on schemes for its relief; let not that man dare to boast of integrity, fidelity, or honour; let him not presume to recommend the preservation of our faith, or adherence to our confederates: that wretch can have no real regard to any moral obligation, who has forgotten those first duties which nature impresses; nor can he that neglects the happiness of his country, recommend any good action for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... discern the fallacy of this reasoning and protest against it, when it is attempted to be introduced into the commerce of life. We see clearly that it would afford the means of refining away by turns every moral obligation. The adulterer might allow himself with a good conscience, to violate the bed of his unsuspecting friend, whenever he could assure himself that his crime would escape detection; for then, where would be the evil and misery, the prevention of which was the real ultimate ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... good character, what should we expect from those whose fetters have hardly fallen from their limbs; who have been systematically degraded by slavery; who have not consequently that lively sense of moral obligation which accompanies intelligence; who are beyond the influence of public sentiment, and surrounded by ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... world, on the principle that mankind are capable of self-control, regulating their conduct by the hope of reward or fear of punishment. If the consciousness of freedom be a delusion, it follows that moral obligation, duty, reward, guilt, punishment, are delusions, and that religion, however salutary in its effects, is nothing ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... manifesto, in which he says:—"Ever since the Union the best and most honourable of Irishmen have looked on rebellion as a sacred duty, provided there were a reasonable chance of success. It has never occurred to me to consider acquiescence to the Government of England as a moral obligation or as other than a dire necessity. We have never, thank God, lied to our oppressors by saying we were loyal to them. And when we have condemned the rebels whose heroism and self-sacrifice we have loved and wept over, we condemned not their want of loyalty, but their want of prudence. We thought ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... admissible when it is exercised for the advancement of civilization, and the conqueror not only takes upon himself, but carries out, the moral obligation to improve the condition of the subjected peoples and render them happier. How far the Spaniards of each generation fulfilled that obligation may be judged from these pages, the works of Mr. W. H. Prescott, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the emancipated race, by their former masters, and by the General Government, the author of the act of emancipation. That it was a wise, just, and providential act, fraught with good for all concerned, is now generally conceded throughout the country. That a moral obligation rests upon the National Government to employ its constitutional power and influence to establish the rights of the people it has emancipated, and to protect them in the enjoyment of those rights when they are infringed or ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... Insurance Act of 1920 "contracting out" was provided for, but it was penalised, while at the present moment it is prohibited altogether. I say that it should rather be encouraged, that everything should be done, in fact, to suggest that not a legal but a moral obligation lies upon each industry to do its best to work out a satisfactory unemployment scheme. And, when an industry has done that, I think the State should come in again. I think that the representative joint committee, formed to administer such a scheme, might well be endowed ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Louisiana: 'It appears to me that this measure would justify revolution in this country. I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligation, and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must.' He said further: 'If this bill passes, it is a death blow to the Constitution.' Strange words, indeed, in our ears at this time, and ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... moral obligation forbids developing our navy upon lines and proportions adequate to the work it may be called upon to do. Here, again, the crippling force is a public impression, which limits our potential strength to the necessities of an imperfectly realized ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... receipt of bribes. But Mr. Hastings was forbidden it, first, by his official situation,—next, by covenant,—and lastly, by act of Parliament: that is to say, by all the things that bind mankind, or that can bind them,—first, moral obligation inherent in the duty of their office,—next, the positive injunctions of the legislature of the country,—and lastly, a man's own private, particular, voluntary act and covenant. These three, the great and only obligations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... duty marked out so obvious and so neglected; even the religious sentiment awakened by the conscience so dividing itself from the moral instinct! the dread of being thought less religious by obscure comparative strangers stronger than the moral obligation to discover and reclaim the child for whose errors, if she had erred, the mother who so selfishly forsook her was alone responsible! even at the last, at the approach of death, the love for a name she had never made a self-sacrifice to preserve unstained; and that concluding ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... interested in the promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any author to believe as few as possible—or perhaps only one, in which case any promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay, in the following account of his own ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... sense of the great majority of the nation, and they should be put in force with all their rigorous provisions,—if his opinion were asked by the people as to their obedience, he should tell them, that it was no longer a question of moral obligation and duty, but of prudence." Mr. Sheridan followed in the bold footsteps of his friend, and said, that "if a degraded and oppressed majority of the people applied to him, he would advise them to acquiesce in those bills only as long as resistance ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... to be blamed if they declare that an Act so passed will possess no moral obligation, and that they are determined, should the terrible necessity arise, to aid the Ulstermen in ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... to "play," from the sons and daughters of foolishness, to those in whom their life was still green—Donec virenti canities abest!—Donec virenti canities abest! Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... all parties concerned. This is the sum maximum of all ethical science and is complete. To add to it, or take from it, would change the rule. Then, the solution to all ills must be measured by that sense of conscience unimpaired, emanating from that innate rule of human duty based upon moral obligation. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... else had she? This young girl, had she not become his burden of responsibility; his moral obligation? For the first time he seemed to realize how the fine tendrils of her nature had touched his; touched and clung, ever so gently but fast. Her fine scorn for dissimulation; her answering integrity; the true adjustment of her ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... however, that the Antinomians (who will be dealt with more extensively in a following chapter) as well as several other opponents of the Majorists were unwilling to allow the statement, "Good works are necessary." Falsely interpreting the proposition as necessarily implying, not merely moral obligation, but also compulsion and coercion, they rejected it as unevangelical and semipopish. The word "must" is here not in place, they protested. Agricola, as well as the later Antinomians (Poach and Otto), rejected the expressions "necessarium, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... intellectual, moral and social feeling was rising in Condorcet to that supremacy which it afterwards attained in him to so admirable a degree. He wrote essays on integral calculus, but he was already beginning to reflect upon the laws of human societies and the conditions of moral obligation. At the root of Condorcet's nature was a profound sensibility of constitution. One of his biographers explains his early enthusiasm for virtue and human welfare as the conclusion of a kind of syllogism. It is possible that the syllogism ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... your staying here is going to make anything any easier, while things are as they are in California!' My dear," said Barbara with a sigh, "Francis gets that way sometimes; English people do—there seems to be a sort of moral obligation upon them to say what's true, no matter ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Atticus failed to love him enough—that would have been too unreasonable. In a certain way he means that he loved him too much. He allowed his spontaneous feelings full vent, without acting with the cool wisdom which he would have shewn in fulfilling a duty or moral obligation. It is more fully expressed above. Still, it was a difficult thing to say, and he doesn't succeed ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... take advantage of the means for the future benefit of his children is a moral obligation placed upon the shoulders of the individual parent. It becomes a legal obligation only when, and in so far as, the moral obligation is not realised by a certain number of the community. Certainly one reason for the making of the education ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... political organization was of a wonderfully perfect character; and their laws, and especially the organization of the judiciary, the department by which they were to be interpreted and administered, were stamped by a clear insight into the nature of moral obligation, and the mutual duties and rights of the members of society, which strike us with the utmost astonishment. Their mythology, with the single exception of the sanction it gives to human sacrifices, indicates a much nearer approach to a knowledge of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... scruples not a whit to approve or disapprove the acts of others, to take measures against his enemies, to appeal to the generosity and justice of those he would dissuade from an unworthy step. One can no more rid himself of the notion of moral obligation than of that of time or space; and as surely as we must resign ourselves to walking before we know how to define this space through which we move and this time that measures our movements, so surely must we submit to moral obligation before having put our finger on its deep-hidden ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development of the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her husband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed by the East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On these principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors, the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and all the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, three acts of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... unpreparedness, of alleged ignorance of conditions, are shamed by the proven human suffering and humiliation repeated each day of the week, from Wednesday to Sunday. Even where the employer's innate sense of moral obligation fails to point out his duty, he should have realized the insanity of stimulating unrest and bitterness in this inflammable labor force. The riot on the —— ranch is a California contribution to the literature of ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... by deceit, and I will throw him off in the face of day," returned Lady Levison. "There is no moral obligation why I should not. He has worked ill and ruin—ill and ruin upon me and my child, and the world shall never be allowed to think I have borne my share in it. How was it you kept your hands off him, when he reappeared, to brave you, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... be questioned whether Johnson was entirely in the right. I suppose it will not be controverted that the difference in the degree of criminality is very great, on account of consequences: but still it may be maintained, that, independent of moral obligation, infidelity is by no means a light offence in a husband; because it must hurt a delicate attachment, in which a mutual constancy is implied, with such refined sentiments as Massinger has exhibited in his play of The Picture.—Johnson probably at another time would have admitted this opinion. And ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... by, but I apprehend that other repressive and tyrannical measures will be passed. These arbitrary acts of Parliament have had one lamentable result, they have made the people of the Colonies a community of smugglers. I am pained to say that we are losing all correct sense of moral obligation in matters pertaining to the government. No one thinks it disreputable to smuggle goods into the country because everybody feels that the laws are unjust. The ministry undertook to enforce the laws against smuggling not long since, by issuing Writs of Assistance, as they ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the realization of its program on these matters may be justifiable; on the other hand, loyalty to party in local politics may be an evil. There is no Democratic way of cleaning a street, and no Republican method of fighting a fire. Thus the same citizen who may be under a moral obligation to support some party in National and state politics, may be under a similar obligation to make his choice of local candidates independent of party. A desirable development, in this regard, is the recent tendency for some municipal ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... stated above (A. 5), gratitude regards the favor received according the intention of the benefactor; who seems be deserving of praise, chiefly for having conferred the favor gratis without being bound to do so. Wherefore the beneficiary is under a moral obligation to bestow something gratis in return. Now he does not seem to bestow something gratis, unless he exceeds the quantity of the favor received: because so long as he repays less or an equivalent, he would seem to do nothing gratis, but only to return what he has received. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... problem, the problem of the adjustment of the desires of individuals living together. For an individual living altogether alone in the world there could hardly be a moral problem, a question of "ought." There might be problems of how to attain satisfaction, but no sense of duty or moral obligation. Custom is the first great stage through which morality passes, and the only form in which morality exists for many people. In civilized life there is, to be sure, considerable reflection and querying of custom, but for the vast ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and supervision, the guiding mind of the mistress will make itself felt in every department of the household without any undue worry to herself. The mistress of a small household who has things more under her immediate control, and whose income, no less than her sense of moral obligation, obliges her to look carefully after the outgoings, need not be told what a trial it is to be constantly on the watch to prevent waste. Probably she is compelled to leave a certain quantity of stores for general use; ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... regarding the relations of sociology and ethics, see my article on "The Sociological Basis of Ethics," in the International Journal of Ethics for April, 1910.] Ethics is the science which deals with the right or wrong of human conduct. Its problems are the nature of morality and of moral obligation, the validity of moral ideals, the norms by which conduct is to be judged, and the like. While ethics was once considered to be a science of individual conduct it is now generally conceived as being essentially a social science. The moral and the social ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... The only moral obligation that weighs with me is that which I feel under, to deal fairly by Donnelly and the School. You must not argue against this, as rightly or wrongly I am certain that if I deserted the School hastily, or if I did not do all ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... formulated this authority in Giri. Very rightly did they formulate this authority—Giri—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. Giri thus understood is a severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their part. ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... systems, many of the civil duties of life cannot be performed without perjury on the one hand, or risk of life on the other, and that the whole principle of the combination is founded upon hatred, revenge, and a violation of all moral obligation? ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... calling your attention to the situation of my different creditors, whose claims are the claims of justice, and whose demands I am bound by honor and every moral obligation to discharge; it is not, therefore, without great concern I have heard insinuations tending to question the legality of their right to the payment of those just debts: they proceeded from advances made by them openly and honorably for the support of my own and the public affairs. But I hope the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... self-same cause. In fact, we cannot get the word "ought" from Determinism; it is as much out of place in that connection as a free worker in a slave-compound. But every reform springs from a sense of "oughtness"; and the sense of moral obligation is itself the spontaneous expression of the consciousness of moral freedom. So far as we believe in the duty of reform—or in "duty" itself, sans phrase—we have already renounced Determinism, and proclaimed our belief in liberty. Let it be said once more, before we pass ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... for almost all the education my youthful years were blessed with. Towards some of them I was taught in infancy to look up with reverence and esteem; and the recollection of their Christian virtues proves to me that whatever tendency Calvinism may have to relax the ties of moral obligation, the argument cannot be drawn from the lives of many of its professors. With many Clergymen who take Calvinism for their creed, I have still the happiness to live in bonds of Christian friendship; but my respect for the men does ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun
... Creator, Governor, and Judge, he will probably defer to it so far as to admit that this is the only logical result of his system, but will add that, where there is no conclusive evidence on either side, there can be no moral obligation to a religious life, and no guilt in living "without God in the world." It will be found, too, that, distinct as these two forms of Speculative Atheism may appear to be, yet they have often been made to rest on a common ground, and the self-same arguments have been adduced ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... what ought to be done, moral obligation, accountableness^, liability, onus, responsibility; bounden duty, imperative duty; call, call of duty; accountability. allegiance, fealty, tie engagement &c (promise) 768; part; function, calling &c (business) 625. morality, morals, decalogue; case of conscience; conscientiousness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... refuse to lend herself to beastly lust? She remains the proprietor of her own body, though married; and who is so lost to all sense of justice, equity, and even morality, as to claim that she is under any moral obligation to allow her ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... width.[27] The moral conditions under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of truth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of affection; fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often to speak of the moral obligation laid upon every man to think truly, as well as to speak and act truly, and said that much intellectual demoralization and ruin resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely tolerant of all difference of opinion, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... styled "compulsory" arbitration,—arbitration stipulated, that is, in advance of a question originating, or of its conditions being appreciated,—that a state may thereby do that which a citizen as towards the state does not do; namely, may voluntarily assume a moral obligation to do, or to allow, wrong. And it must be remembered, also, that many of the difficulties which arise among states involve considerations distinctly beyond and higher than law as international law now exists; whereas the advocated Permanent Tribunal, to which the ultra-organizers ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... itself in his mind as the machine-like voice of duty. He was not thinking of the Law, and yet the consciousness of his accountability to that Law kept repeating itself. In the very face of it Carrigan knew that something besides the moral obligation of the thing was urging him, something that was becoming deeply and dangerously personal. At least—he tried to think of it as dangerous. And that danger was his unbecoming interest in the girl herself. It was an interest distinctly removed from any ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... State Constitution must be the source of the obligation—yes; but the State Constitution as it was construed by the United States Supreme Court in this very case, in the light of the "general principles of our political institutions." In short the obligation is a moral one; and this moral obligation is treated by Marshall as having been converted into a legal one by the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... theory to degrade the mental dignity of man. And it also degrades the moral nature and faculties of man, and undermines the very foundations of moral and religious principle, in that it teaches that man is only a better developed brute—the natural result being that man is no more under moral obligation than the brute, or has no different basis of moral obligation from the brute, but only a better idea of right and wrong, because on a higher plane in the process of evolution. It strikes at the root of the doctrine that men are, by their origin and ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... his best? No, Holymead knew that Birchill was innocent; he knew who the guilty man was, and, knowing that, knowing that his action in defending the man charged with the murder of an old friend would weigh with the jury, he took up the case because he felt there was a moral obligation on him to get Birchill off. His conduct of the defence, during which he attacked the moral character of your father, was remarkable, coming from him—the friend of the dead man. As the action of defending counsel it was perfectly ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... 1851 placed posterity, equally with the Covenanters of that day, in oath-bound relation to God. A Public Covenant with God continues in its moral obligation until its terms are fulfilled. Are we lifting up our lives into relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ through our inherited Covenant? Are we fulfilling our sworn duties to our country, our Church, and our Lord? Are we using all lawful means to cause true religion to prevail? ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... roundabout way, all her diffused apprehensions of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article,—as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past,—had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting moral obligation. If she had indeed been careless of her husband's affairs, it was, her new state seemed to prove, because her faith in him instinctively justified such carelessness; and his right to her faith had overwhelmingly affirmed itself in the very face of menace and suspicion. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Lazarus, positively have Europe under their thumbs. That is why your father is able to behave as he does. He is above the law. Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone or Disraeli could have openly defied every social and moral obligation all their lives as your father has? They simply wouldn't have dared. I asked Gladstone to take it up. I asked The Times to take it up. I asked the Lord Chamberlain to take it up. But it was just like asking them to declare war on the Sultan. They WOULDN'T. They said they ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... course, in that movement, a testimony which should make all earnest lovers of their kind learn how to urge socially therapeutic treatment, a testimony to human weakness, to a lack of the sense of responsibility, to a love of personal pleasure at any cost to moral obligation, and to a need for social control of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... engaged in the common duties of life with great diligence, considering them as a part of the service of God; and, when done from this motive, she said they were as delightful as prayer itself. She also showed an "extreme anxiety to avoid every sin, and to discharge every moral obligation; she was most exemplary in the performance of every social and relative duty; exhibited great inoffensiveness of life and conversation; great meekness, benevolence, and gentleness of spirit; and avoided, with remarkable conscientiousness, all those things which she regarded ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... or abandoning; more particularly, the wilful abandonment of an employment or of duty, in violation of a legal or moral obligation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... barbarism is quite sufficient to propound those enigmas. The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them. It is a mistake to imagine that subtle speculations touching the divine attributes, the origin of evil, the necessity of human actions, the foundation of moral obligation, imply any high degree of intellectual culture. Such speculations, on the contrary, are in a peculiar manner the delight of intelligent children and of half-civilized men. The number of boys is not small who, at fourteen, have thought enough on these questions to be fully entitled ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Jack returned with gallantry, breaking his engagement without compunction. Thereupon, he bought their tickets, and sitting beside her on the crimson velvet seats of a Richmond "Non-stop," plunged recklessly into love at first sight. The moral obligation oppressing his mind was swept away for the time being. How was it possible for it to be otherwise, when he had come into the presence of his "Ideal" ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... exchange, there is a moral obligation that neither of the contracting parties shall gain at the expense of the other; that is, that, to be legitimate and true, commerce must be exempt from all inequality. This is the first condition of commerce. Its second condition is, that it be ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... with God is enjoined by Him as the Supreme Moral Governor of all. That his Covenant should be acceded to, by men in every age and condition, is ordained as a law, sanctioned by his high authority,—recorded in his law of perpetual moral obligation on men, as a statute decreed by him, and in virtue of his underived sovereignty, promulgated by his command. "He hath commanded ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... as to the choice between two alternative courses, as to the measure or limit of a recognized duty, or as to the grounds of preference when there seems to be a conflict of duties. A large proportion of these cases disappear under any just view of moral obligation. Most questions of conscience have their origin in deficient conscientiousness. He who is determined to do the right, the whole right, and nothing but the right, is seldom at a loss to know what he ought to do. But when the aim is to evade all difficult ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... or manifest public convenience. It quite often happens that men of our own generation are insensible or indifferent to the true relation of the citizen to the cause of education. Some seem to imagine that their interest in schools, and of course their moral obligation to support them, ceases with the education of their own children. This is a great error. The public has no right to levy a tax for the education of any particular child, or family of children; but its right of taxation commences when the education or plan of education is universal, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... accept places to work as they had been offered. It was only occasionally that they were all at home together. A sense of love and loyalty for home was fading out of their minds, as was also the sense of moral obligation. The younger children were becoming rebellious and evil-minded. All this Austin read between the lines of the letters. His heart ached as he thought of his dear mother and how different it would have been had she lived. He would be jolly all the evening with ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... remark, we shall dismiss a scheme which resolves our conviction of internal liberty into a mere illusion, and which, however pure may have been the intentions of the author, really saps the foundation of moral obligation, and ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... now she insists—and you will know it from her by the next mail—on returning to Plattville, forsooth, because she has been reading your newspaper, and she says she knows you are in difficulties over it, and it is her moral obligation—as by some wild reasoning of her own she considers herself responsible for your ruffling patron's having been alone when he was shot—to go down and help. I suppose he made love to her, as all the young men she meets always do, sooner or later, but I have no fear of any rustic entanglements tor ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... been under our notice. As pointed out long ago by Aristotle, the suicide wrongs the state rather than himself. Where a man is still able to do any service to the state, in either a private or a public capacity, he is under a social, and, therefore, a moral obligation to perform that service, and, consequently, to withdraw from it by a voluntary death is to desert the post of duty. This consideration, of course, holds only where a man's life is still of value to society, but it should be pointed out that, ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... same] law and right, and the same men would not enact different laws at different times. If a just man and a virtuous man is bound to obey the laws, I ask, what laws do you mean? Do you intend all the laws indifferently? But neither does virtue permit this inconstancy in moral obligation, nor is such a variation compatible with natural conscience. The laws are, therefore, based not on our sense of justice, but on our fear of punishment. There is, therefore, no natural justice; and hence it follows that men cannot be ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... choice, who had assumed arms deliberately and without compulsion, and who by their own votes were responsible that war had been declared. The Germans were conscripts, a dumb, powerless, irresponsible multitude, animated, no doubt, by hereditary hatred of the enemy, but without that sense of moral obligation which exists in the volunteer. We may be permitted, then, to believe that this sense of moral obligation was one reason why the spirit of the Southerners rose superior to human weakness, and that the old adage, which declares that one volunteer is better than three pressed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... older than some of the pupils when we begin work; it's inhuman to take no interest in our welfare. It wouldn't kill a Head to give up a night a month to ask us to meet possible friends, or to write a few letters of introduction. You agree with me in your heart, so it's no use pretending. It's a moral obligation, if it isn't legal, and I say part of the responsibility is hers if things go wrong. It's inhuman to leave a young girl alone in lodgings without even troubling to inquire if she has anywhere to go in her leisure hours. But it's the same tale all round. Nobody thinks. Nobody cares. I've ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... absence of any legal liability on the part of the issuing house imposes on it a very strong moral obligation, which is fully recognized by the best of them. Just because the bondholders have no right of action against it, unless it can be shown that it issued a prospectus containing incorrect statements, it is all the more bound to see that their money shall not be imperilled by any action of ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... the advantages of machination It constitutes a moral obligation, And honest wolves who think upon't with loathing Feel bound to don the sheep's deceptive clothing. So prospers still the diplomatic art, And Satan bows, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... And so might theatres. And if serious and intelligent persons undertook to patronize these, in order to regulate them, perhaps they would be somewhat raised from the depths to which they have sunk. But such persons believe that, with the weak sense of moral obligation existing in the mass of society, and the imperfect ideas mankind have of the proper use of amusements, and the little self-control which men or women or children practice, these will not, in fact, be ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... temporarily charged with the safe-keeping or application of the public money would now have for converting the same to their private use without the consent and against the will of the Government. But independently of the violation of public faith and moral obligation which are involved in this suggestion when examined in reference to the terms of the present deposit act, it is believed that the considerations which should govern the future legislation of Congress ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... contrary impulses, over which he had not the faintest control, Peepi was plainly denuded of all moral obligation to virtue. He was no more a free agent, than the heart which beat in his bosom. Wherefore, his complaisant parliament had passed a law, recognizing that curious, but alarming fact; solemnly proclaiming, that King Peepi was ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... moral obligation to repair the wrong done in 1871 by Germany to France and the people of Alsace-Lorraine, the territories ceded to Germany by the treaty of Frankfort are restored to France with their frontiers as before 1871 to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... we can do this. We are concerned with psychological phenomena, and their nature and significance are by no means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling, and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other concepts of the sort? All this ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... tone. Underlying the feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, so marked a feature of our present day life, there is distinctly discernible among the masses a loosening of religious faith and a slackening {5} of moral obligation. The idea of personality and the sense of duty are not so vivid and strong as they used to be. A vague sentimentalising about sin has taken the place of the more robust view of earlier times, and evil is traced to untoward environment rather than to feebleness of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... reasons for wanting to go from Venice to the Big Venetian. It was the first of July, and the city on the sea was becoming tepid. A slumbrous haze brooded over canals and palaces and churches. It was difficult to keep one's conscience awake to Baedeker and a sense of moral obligation; Ruskin was impossible, and a picture-gallery was a penance. We floated lazily from one place to another, and decided that, after all, it was too warm to go in. The cries of the gondoliers, at the canal corners, grew more and ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... pursued Sir Patrick. "Assuming that Blanche is like most other human beings, and has some prospect of happiness to contemplate, if she could only be made to see it—are we not bound to make her see it, by our moral obligation to act on the medical advice?" He cast a courteously-persuasive look at her ladyship, and paused in the most innocent ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... which you, by contrary instruction, conversation, and accidents, had not attained. Convinced that truth is irresistible, I trusted in the power of these truths rather than of myself, and said here is a mind to which I am under every moral obligation to impart them, because I perceive it equal to their reception. The project therefore of our friends was combined with these circumstances, which induced me willingly to join their plan; and to call my friend sister was an additional and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... known as an henchman of Conkling, there was a lack of public appreciation of the potentialities of a unique personality, but the Arthur heritage included then as afterward absolute truthfulness, shrewdness of judgment, high-minded patriotism, and consciousness of moral obligation.[1704] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... possibilities, shed some idle tears, waste life before the necessity, and go back to everyday work weakened and scarred and aching. And once or twice in a lifetime that black, hopeless never drops down, not the less grievous and inexorable because simply a moral obligation. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that it would even occur to our seven boys to give up what to them is a rare treat for the pleasure of spending an evening with us? As for the moral obligation, they have probably never so much as heard ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... Imperial frame of mind. The consummation of Imperial mastery being the highest and ubiquitously ulterior end of all endeavour, its pursuit not only relieves its votaries from the observance of any minor obligations that run counter to its needs, but it also imposes a moral obligation to make the most of any opportunity for profitable deceit and chicanery that may offer. In short, the dynastic statesman is under the governance of a higher morality, binding him to the service of his nation's ambition—or in point of fact, to the personal service of his dynastic master—to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... icicle, and a stern resolve came upon her. Whatever happened, she saw her duty plainly before her. She had introduced Mr. Turner to Miss Hastings, and she was responsible. It was her moral obligation to rescue him from the clutches of that designing young person, and she immediately reminded him that she had an engagement to give him a tennis lesson every day. There was still time for a set before dinner. Also, far ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... That a moral obligation rests upon every medical practitioner to respect the confidence of his patient; and that without her consent he is not justified in disclosing information obtained in the course of his professional attendance ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the nation. The principle of duty is weakened among you; that of moral obligation is loosened; that of religious obedience is destroyed. Look at the worldliness of all classes—the greediness of the rich, the misery of the poor, and the appalling depravity which is spreading among the lower classes through ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... same cause, and her breathing a little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by some mysterious hurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain had observed her face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the Sou'wester hat), she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself under a moral obligation to slap both his legs again. She was very simply dressed, with no other ornament than an autumnal flower in her bosom. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, but merely a scarf or kerchief, folded squarely back over the head, to keep the sun off,—according to a ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... officers and agents of a corporation are held to the general rule of law resting 'upon our great moral obligation to refrain from placing ourselves in relations which ordinarily excite a conflict between self-interest and integrity.' The directors and officers are the agents of the company, and while acting in that ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... the innumerable refinements of the Roman canon law, affected the legitimacy of the children and raised scruples of conscience in the mind of the king. The loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial sentence on a violation of the Divine law. The divorce presented itself to him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with superstition to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be founded on an immutable and universal law; and that which is usually called the moral sense, to be determined by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earliest ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... a literary institution should be a safe resort, and no other advantages will, in the common estimation, compensate for defect and failure in this particular. The relations which every individual student sustains to God and to eternity, call imperiously and aloud, that the great principles of moral obligation, the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, the methods of the Divine administration, and the solemnities of eternal retribution, should be kept before him, in all their significancy, and enforced by the constraining ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... All the citizens of Athens are regarded as members of the same great tribe or family. But even in the time of Plato, whom we are accustomed to look upon as one of the great teachers of the world, there was no thought of any moral obligation to anybody who lived in Sparta, lived in any other city of Greece, and less was there any thought of moral obligation as touching or taking in the outside barbarian. So when the city grew into a nation, and we came to a point where ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... looked modest. At heart he was a very shy man and he deprecated any idea that he was doing anything unusual in giving most of his time to affairs that paid dividends only in happiness and in the consciousness of moral obligation fulfilled. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers |
