"Moral sense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is now that moral sense which has so much power over that which is merely animal in us, and which can restrain ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... and write their names with difficulty. The prevailing morals correspond with these means of education. In Willenhall, Commissioner Horne asserts, and supplies ample proofs of his assertion, that there exists absolutely no moral sense among the workers. In general, he found that the children neither recognised duties to their parents nor felt any affection for them. They were so little capable of thinking of what they said, so stolid, so hopelessly stupid, that they often ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Ottoboni takes no end of pains to educate Italy; he writes little books to enlighten the intelligence of the children and the common people, and he smuggles them very cleverly into Italy. He takes immense trouble to reform the moral sense of our luckless country, which, after all, prefers pleasure to freedom,—and perhaps ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... draw me. I had a lodging in a poor street at Chelsea, and I could hear the river calling me at night, and—I wished to die as the others had died. At last I yielded, for the drink had rotted out all my moral sense. About one o'clock of a wild, winter morning I went to a bridge I knew where in those days policemen rarely came, and listened to that ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... attention of Congress at their last session and may hereafter require further consideration. Until within a very few years the execution of the laws for raising the revenue, like that of all our other laws, has been insured more by the moral sense of the community than by the rigors of a jealous precaution or by penal sanctions. Confiding in the exemplary punctuality and unsullied integrity of our importing merchants, a gradual relaxation from the provisions of the collection laws, a close adherence to which would have caused inconvenience ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... that lady, 'I very plainly perceive, you will be able to fulfil, unless you comply with Monsieur de Veron's wishes; and if you have any real regard for Adeline, you will signify that acquiescence without delay, for her brother's ruin would in a moral sense be hers also. Part of the money has, I understand, been squandered on the presents you have made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... and evil, right and wrong—to have a conscience, a moral sense—that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach to-day. Because it is through THAT knowledge of good and evil, and through it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. It is through our moral sense that God speaks ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... part of Africa call a two-shilling piece,[*] and pocketed it before he answered. The fact that the giver had murdered all his near relations did not make the gift less desirable in his eyes. Hottentot moral sense is not very elevated. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... have been and still to be the custom of some nations to make sepulchres the repositories of their greatest riches is (I am sure) universally true in a moral sense however it may be thought in the literal there being never a grave but what conceals a treasure though all have not the art to discover it I do not here invite the covetous miser to disturb the dead who can frame no idea of treasure distinct from gold and silver ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... self-containment, and in a just appreciation of the mighty power that lies in propinquity—the propinquity of an inspiring ideal. Miss Farnham was never enthusiastic; that, perhaps, would be asking too much of an ideal; but what she lacked in warmth was made up in cool sanity, backed by a moral sense that seemed never to waver. Unerringly she placed her finger upon the human weaknesses in his book-people, and unfalteringly she bade him ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... said with truth, that the theological imagery and speculations of that day, particularly as developed in the writings of the two Mathers, were more adapted to mislead the mind and shroud its moral sense in darkness, than any system, even of mythology, that ever existed. It was a mythology. It may be spoken of with freedom, now, as it has probably passed away, in all enlightened communities in Christendom. Satan was the great central character, in what was, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... before. He had come face to face with what he called Vice for the first time, and found it not at all what he had supposed it to be. He had believed that he knew it to be most dangerously attractive to the physical, but utterly repugnant to the moral sense; and such fascination he was prepared to resist to the utmost. But he was attacked in just the opposite way, and thereby so thrown off his guard that he did not know he was attacked at all; so that he told himself ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... far to seek. Too long had the moral sense of educated men been outraged by common fraud and deceit for any continuance of a regime which had disgraced China for four long years to be humanly possible. Far and wide the word was rapidly passing that Yuan Shih-kai was not the man he had once been: he was in reality ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the members of the pluralism are bad, the philosophy of pluralism, whatever broad views it may deny me, permits me, at least, to turn to the other members with a clean breast of affection and an unsophisticated moral sense. And if I still wish to think of the world as a totality, it lets me feel that a world with a chance in it of being altogether good, even if the chance never come to pass, is better than a world with no such chance at all. That 'chance' whose very notion I am exhorted and conjured to ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... away, Cal felt a pity at the uselessness of the self-torture, the senseless need of man to punish himself for the guilt of imagined wrongs; and felt a wonder if the strangely developed moral sense of man had not, after all, done more harm than good. For in the ordered universe, where everything fitted into the whole, what could be either good or bad, right or wrong, except as a reflection of man's inadequacies in his imaginings? ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... let me recapitulate our case. Mr. Davis is not the man to urge others to acts he dares not commit himself. He believes this dreadful statute unconstitutional, a violation of our moral sense, a great breach upon the safeguards of freedom every where. Yet he will oppose it legally, by speech, by the pen, and in Court. He will not yield to it any voluntary obedience, but he will not use force, or counsel citizens to use force to set aside the laws. He rejoices that ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... resemblance to a clumsy young cart-horse in its winter coat of dusty brown hair, made Mary violently ashamed of her ambitious scheming. She loved him precisely as he was; she loved them all; and as she walked by his side, up and down, and down and up, her strong moral sense administered a sound drubbing to the vain and romantic element aroused in her by the mere thought of Ralph. She felt quite certain that, for good or for bad, she was very like the rest of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean—in the literal, not the moral sense—scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in "Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole life is given up to love, and then, as we know, he chose a singularly crude ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... only the religious view of man that builds up civilization. A great community is the record of man's supernaturalism, his uniqueness. It is built on the "higher-than-self" principle which is involved in the moral sense itself. And this higher-than-self is not just a collective naturalism, a social consciousness, as Durkheim and Overstreet and Miss Harrison would say. The simplest introspective act will prove that. For a man cannot ignore self-condemnation as if it were only a natural difficulty, nor ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... know nothing of billiards; women never do. They are my joy. Pardon me," (with a sudden uprising of the moral sense,) "I have an engagement at the billiard-room, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... monarchy where the king was appointed by the people and controlled by Parliament, and an avowed republic. This was the principle held by nearly all his contemporaries. He deliberately rejected it. He did not hold that the voice of the people was the voice of God. This belief did not satisfy his moral sense; it seemed in public life to leave all to interest and ambition and nothing to duty. It did not satisfy his critical intellect; the word "people" was to him a vague idea. The service of the People or of the King by the Grace of God, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... "candid and honorable conduct is not incompatible with patriotism." The same paper quoted, in this connection, the words of Manin, which are a condemnation of the whole conduct of the Piedmontese under Victor Emmanuel: "Means which the moral sense repels, even when they are materially profitable, deal a mortal blow to a cause. No victory can be put in comparison with the absence of self-respect." Ancona was yet undergoing bombardment, when ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... atmosphere of that home—where she had known two mothers before she was ten and she saw with a child's shrewd eyes that another was coming. Yet in some subsoil of the life about her the roots of her life were finding a moral sense. Her hazel eyes were questioning so curiously the old man who fathered her that he felt uncomfortable when she was near him. Yet for all the money he had won and all that money had made him, he was reckoned among ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to be hurried out of it in this eventful manner?" The conversation of the evening recurred to John Effingham, and he inwardly said, "If there exist such varieties of the human race among nations, there are certainly as many species, in a moral sense, in civilized life itself. This man has his counterpart in a particular feature in the every-day American absorbed in the pursuit of gain; and yet how widely different are the two in the minor points of character! While the other allows himself no rest, no relaxation, no mitigation ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... thick darkness, in order that they may obtain light themselves and diffuse light among others! Ignorance is sent to instruct ignorance, ungodliness to exhort ungodliness, vice to stop the progress of vice, and depravity to reform depravity! All that is abhorrent to our moral sense, or dangerous to our quietude, or villanous in human nature, we benevolently disgorge upon Africa for her temporal and eternal welfare! We propose to build upon her shores, for her glory and defence, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... what a midshipman's life on shore often is, may easily conceive the description of scenes into which he introduced me. With the wariness of the serpent, however, he took care not too early to shock my moral sense, and therefore only gave me glimpses of the scenes to which I have alluded. We were at Naples for some months. As my father had begged the captain, whenever duty would permit, to give me every opportunity of seeing all that was to be seen ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... possibility of accepting the pardon of sin with too light a heart. To ask for pardon Without real shame is to treat sin lightly; and to treat sin lightly is to treat God lightly. Nothing more effectually deadens the moral sense than: the habit of asking pardon without a due sense of the evil of sin. We ask God to forgive us our debts, and we do so in so inconsiderate a spirit that we go straightway and contract heavier debts. The friend who repays the ten ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... iii. 8, v. 19, and the terrors of the wilderness hover over all his message. He had observed with acuteness and sympathy the great natural laws which the experiences of his shepherd life so amply illustrated, iii. 15., and his simple moral sense is provoked by the cities, with the immoral civilization for which they stand. With a lofty scorn this desert man looks upon the palaces, i. 4, etc., the winter and the summer houses, iii. 15, in which the luxurious and rapacious grandees of the time indulged, and contemplates ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... conscience. Laws, customs, and social conventions he regarded as ineffectual means to good. There is no virtue in one who is restrained from evil by fear. He went further: he regarded external restraints as means to bad, since they come between a man and his conscience and blunt the moral sense. "So long as I keep to the rules," says the smug citizen, "I am of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State, with its negative virtues, its mean standards, its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He was a ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the ironies of fate that the baser influences, now gaining new power at Court, created or stimulated discontent, the brunt of which fell on Clarendon, against whose authority these influences were chiefly directed. The moral sense of the nation was being gradually provoked. That sense is regulated by no great judgment, and often moves under violent prejudice; but it slowly yet surely shapes itself on sound foundations. The reaction against ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... shows incessantly the preoccupation of the apologist—the mental reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to convince adversaries.[1] It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural, ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of his characters might have been realised. An audience familiar with Italian novels through Belleforest and Painter, inflamed by the long struggle of the Reformation against the scarlet abominations of the Papal See, outraged in their moral sense by the political paradoxes of Machiavelli, horror-stricken at the still recent misdoings of Borgias and Medici and Farnesi, alarmed by that Italian policy which had conceived the massacre of S. Bartholomew in France, and infuriated ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... mightiest armies in recorded history, and only retreated when ordered to do so by the high command of the Allied forces in order to conform to its strategic plans. The English were not defeated at Mons. It was a victory, both in a technical and moral sense. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... comes that ineradicable conviction of the supremacy of righteousness, of the utter loveliness of the good, and utter hatefulness of the evil? I am not concerned with the steps of the process by which the moral sense may have developed. The majesty of goodness, before which I bow, really, sincerely, even when by my acts I give the lie to my own innermost convictions, that is no creation of my consciousness. Nor do I see ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... the Fathers not only conceived grace to be necessary for the cure of weakness induced by sin (gratia sanans) in a merely moral sense, but thought it to be metaphysically necessary for the communication of physical strength (gratia elevans), is evidenced by such oft-recurring similes as these: Grace is as necessary for salvation as the eye ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... the evolution of insanity as in that of catarrh. There is a morbid structural basis in minds diseased, the abnormal mentality or morality being merely symptoms of a physical disease. Of all human legacies, structural weakness of the mental or moral sense ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... a closed incident, but Mr. Wilson's policy has been vindicated in principle. For the first time since Mr. Roosevelt shocked the moral sense and aroused the political resentment of all the Latin-American states by the rape of Panama, faith in the integrity and friendship of the United States has been restored among the other nations ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... present we must depend, in a measure, for an abstinence from open demonstrations against us on the part of the nations above referred to, upon the moral sense of the world, which has doubtless, to a great extent, preserved us thus far. But while it is necessary to avoid giving any pretext for war, let no tame submission to insult or wrong lower us in the eyes of the world, and hereafter let it be our policy, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... these idle qualms, This shrinking backwards at the bugbear conscience; In early life I heard the phantom nam'd, And the grave sages prate of moral sense Presiding in the bosom of the just; Or planting thongs about the guilty heart. Bound by these shackles, long my lab'ring mind, Obscurely trod the lower walks of life, In hopes by honesty my bread ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... now it appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded—it was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... grand course among the nations a change occurred in the minds and practices of the people of a majority of the States. The love of liberty, because of its own great self, and not because of its application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive character and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears stuffed with ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... looks for illumination on life's problem, beauty in itself is insufficient. It is the best office of art, of Beethoven's art in particular, that it leads ever onward and upward; that it acts not only on the esthetic and moral sense, but develops the mental faculties as well, enabling the individual to find a purpose and meaning ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... To the moral sense so dangerous are the effects of this quality, that it would hardly, perhaps, be generalising too widely to assert that wheresoever great versatility of power exists, there will also be found a tendency to versatility of principle. The poet Chatterton, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... judged," resumed M. Fauvel. "A father not only pardons, he forgets. Do I not know the terrible temptations that beset a young man in a city like Paris? There are some inordinate desires before which the firmest principles must give way, and which so pervert our moral sense as to render us incapable of judging between right and wrong. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... word "foisonless," that it means "without strength or sap; dried up; withered." Scott, in Old Mortality, uses it in the moral sense, "unsubstantial." ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the legislature or congress do nothing? Is the law and moral right to continue to be trodden under foot? Are the magistrates and the police powerless? The truth is the harlots and whoremongers are master of the situation; the moral sense of the legislators, the magistrates, and the {425} police is so low that anything like confidence is at present out ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... queer. Gulden hasn't the moral sense to lie. Bate says he wants to make trouble between you and me. I doubt that. I don't believe Gulden could see a ghost, either. He's simply mistaken some miner ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... sir. The war loosened "form" all over the place. I saw plenty of that myself. And some men have no moral sense. From the first ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Miss Wiggin, "you wouldn't; and you know it. In certain cases where the laws are manifestly unjust, antiquated or perhaps do not really represent the moral sense of the community their violation may occasionally call attention to their absurdity, like the famous blue laws of Connecticut, for example; but as the laws as a whole do crystallize the general opinion ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... law of growth in life is so far from logical, so operative by inconsistent fluctuations, that it is of the greatest social use for each fresh generation of reformers to hew to the line and express that intolerance of compromise which helps the struggling moral sense to clarify the issues of each ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... that great dramatist has depicted vice, and ably as he has sometimes shown its coexistence with physical energy and intellectual superiority,—much as he may teach us to admire the villain for some of his attributes, he never confounds the limits of right and wrong. He produces no obliquity in our moral sense, nor seduces us to lend our sympathy against the dictates of our better reason. Neither in his graver, nor in his gayer scenes, is there aught which can corrupt. He invests profligacy with no attractive colours, nor lends a false and imposing greatness to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... any difference of kind or degree in the moral sense of the two races? In the prevailing view of authoritative students morality is emotional and not intellectual in its origin, and the warrant of right doing is attributed not to some hypothetical objective standard, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... woman busy for a week. Poor Jack! He was not a great hand at needlework. She had been shocked at the state in which she had found him. But she had not shirked her responsibilities. And more than ever was she glad now that she had come to him. For he needed her in a moral sense as well. She was too much of a "new chum" to help him in any very active sense outside the homestead at present. But he needed a good deal of moral backing just at that moment. She had come to him straight from England, and full ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... know so well. At least for a few hours there was a respite for her from the terrific pangs she had been suffering. She was almost happy, smiling. Even that false happiness, I felt, was superior to Armstrong's moral sense blunted by drugs. I had begun to realize how lying, stealing, crimes of all sorts might be laid at the door of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... are confronted with phenomena of a repulsive character. For the German's keen practical sense, his sustained concentration of effort on the furtherance of material interests, and his scorn of ethical restraints render him a formidable competitor in pacific pursuits and a dangerous enemy in war. His moral sense is not so much dulled by experience as warped by education. It may be likened to a clock which has not stopped but shows the wrong hour. He has been taught that there are times and circumstances when religious and ethical standards may or must be set aside, and he arrogates to himself ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of the credit of the General Government of the Union and that of many of the States. Happy would it be for the indebted States if they were freed from their liabilities, many of which were incautiously contracted. Although the Government of the Union is neither in a legal nor a moral sense bound for the debts of the States, and it would be a violation of our compact of union to assume them, yet we can not but feel a deep interest in seeing all the States meet their public liabilities and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... She understood his reference to herself and her new sweetheart. Hubert would play her game if she would play his. Well—she had no objection whatever to help him to the sight of Laura when she could. Polly's moral sense was not over-delicate, and as to the upshot and issues of things, her imagination moved but slowly. She did not like to let herself think of what might have been Hubert's relations to women—to one or two wild ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whether to be for or against the American cause. The Duke of Richmond, a great grandson of Charles II, said in the House of Lords that under no code should the fighting Americans be considered traitors. What they did was "perfectly justifiable in every possible political and moral sense." All the world knows that Chatham and Burke and Fox urged the conciliation of America and hundreds took the same stand. Burke said of General Conway, a man of position, that when he secured a majority in the House of Commons against the Stamp Act his face ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... feeling and imagination, which is not very friendly to a correct virtue. Plato would certainly have banished him from his republic, and the Avignonese would do well to keep him out of their schools and houses. They will catch his ardour, who want his moral sense and religious principles. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... seest the dang'rous strife In which some demon bids me plunge my life, To the Aonian fount direct my feet, Say where the Nine thy lonely musings meet? Where warbles to thy ear the sacred throng, Thy moral sense, thy dignity of song? Tell, for you can, by what unerring art You wake to finer feelings every heart; In each bright page some truth important give, And bid to future times ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... difference to the accused on trial. If the defendant thinks that God has directed him to kill a wicked man, he may know that such an act will not only be contrary to law, but also in opposition to the moral sense of the community as a whole, and yet he may believe that it is his conscientious duty to take life. In the case of Hadfield, who deliberately fired at George III in order to be hung, the defendant believed himself ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... unusual. I confess I've not known any man of your class except you—and I know you very slightly. It was I that persuaded Victor to go to you. He believes that a man's class feeling controls him—makes his moral sense—compels his actions. But I thought you were an exception—and he yielded after I urged ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... thing as universal justice, then all men have their rights under it—even verminous persons. We are obliged to put constraint upon them when their habits afflict us beyond a certain point. And civilised nations are obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised ones which shock their moral sense beyond a certain point—as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But such interference should stand upon a nice sense of the offender's rights, and in practice does so stand. The custom of polygamy, for instance (as practised abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His Majesty's ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shamming? Was she striving, ignorantly, to make escape easy for them all? Was she utterly devoid of moral sense? "Moral sense!" At that Lans Treadwell paused. The glory shining from Cynthia's eyes as she stood before him, made him shrink and drop his own. The strength and purity of the high places was upon her. She was lovely and tender, but primitively firm. The law of the cities she did not ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... powerful, but I don't feel that firm footing in it that I do in "Roderick;" my imagination goes sinking and floundering in the vast spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths; I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies; my moral sense is almost outraged; I can't believe, or with horror am made to believe, such desperate chances against omnipotences, such disturbances of faith to the centre. The more potent the more painful the spell. Jove and his brotherhood of gods, tottering with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... noble hopes in many directions, hopes which inspired me to believe in his truth and goodness, aside from his capabilities for achieving greatness. His eagle sight, which read through other men's shams and pretences; his moral sense, which bade him shun even the appearance of evil, not only permitted, but urged him, seemingly, into this marriage with Flossy, by which he effectually cut himself off from his dearest aspirations. One by one I have seen him relinquish ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... from the region of expediency, and put it on the ground of law; and this course no man nor body of men is ever justified in pursuing. Such a step trenches on the sacred enclosure of the individual moral sense, a holy of holies, into which man and his Maker alone enter. At the same time, abundant light will be given to every humble, faithful child of Christ, to settle these questions of expediency. When love to God ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... revolutionary element in existence, in order that it might eventually fasten upon slavery as the instrument of its treason, and thus bring this system, condemned alike by the lessons of experience and by the moral sense of mankind, to that complete eventual destruction, which seems ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... matter of fact, this charge of "barbarism" against those methods of warfare which shock our moral sense must not be taken too literally. The methods of real barbarians in war are not especially "barbarous." They have sometimes committed acts of cruelty which are revolting to us to-day, but for the most part the excesses of barbarous warfare have been looting and burning, together ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... constantly before our minds. The law talks about rights, and duties, and malice, and intent, and negligence, and so forth, and nothing is easier, or, I may say, more common in legal reasoning, than to take these words in their moral sense, at some state of the argument, and so to drop into fallacy. For instance, when we speak of the rights of man in a moral sense, we mean to mark the limits of interference with individual freedom which we think are prescribed by conscience, ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... The elements and types and seminal principles and constructive powers of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be referred to Him. He "enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world." His are the dictates of the moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of conscience. To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the intellect, the irradiation of genius, the imagination of the poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scripture calls it), which now rears and decorates the Temple, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the father announcing Phoebe's own death, and also that of the daughter whom Maisie had bequeathed to her care. He must have been inspired and upborne in this difficult task by the spirit of a true artist. No doubt all faussure, to any person with an accommodating moral sense, is an unmixed delight. This letter remains, and has been seen by the present writer and others. The dexterity of the thing almost passes belief, only a few scarcely perceptible traces of the old writing ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... he brought out cards and we began to bet on the game, both my moral sense and my prudence deserted me. I drank more and more, and bet higher and higher, and after a while I realized that he had won from me quite a sum of money which I had neglected to send to ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... average sensible man—approaches and the pair hold converse. It is a revelation of the face of foolishness. Laertes reproaches Hamlet. He has by his trifling with Ophelia caused her death. Laertes calls him a poor demented one, exclaims over his lack of moral sense, and winds up by bidding the crazy Prince leave the cemetery. Quand on finit par folie, c'est qu'on a commence par le cabotinage. (Which is a consoling axiom for an actor.) Hamlet with ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... active benevolence," as Dr. Wayland denominates the rule of non-resistance, will prevent nations from attacking the harmless and defenceless, it will be still more likely to prevent individuals from the like aggressions; for the moral sense is less active in communities than where the responsibility ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... not yet come across them, was astonished to find in the girl an absence of all faith: he marveled at her tenacious hold on life, without pleasure or purpose, and most of all he admired her sturdy moral sense that had no need of prop or support. Till then he had only seen the French people through naturalistic novels, and the theories of the mannikins of contemporary literature, who, reacting from the art of the century of pastoral scenes and the Revolution, loved to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... XIII. The moral sense of mankind, which places the example of self-sacrifice among the noblest lessons by which our nature can be corrected, has justly immortalized the memory of Leonidas. It is impossible to question the virtue of the man, but we may fairly dispute ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... validity of his institutions, that she was visited by such terrible calamities. Let it be "burnt in on the memory" of every generation, that such is the legitimate tendency of infidel opinions. They first destroy the conscience—blunt the moral sense—harden the heart, and wither up all the social and kindly affections, and then their votaries are ripe for any deed of wickedness within the possibility ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... probably are, Chinamen who are as honourable, upright, and honest as the average Englishman, but my experience, such as it has been, is that they are not to be found aboard a junk. The Chinese seaman is, as a rule, drawn from the lowest stratum of his people, and among such men the moral sense, if not absolutely lacking, is very nearly so. They are barbarian, and all their instincts are primitive. Honour and honesty are words that have no meaning for them; they are, before all things else, intensely acquisitive, and if they want a thing they ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization,—culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battle-ship, with two hundred and sixty of its officers and ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... of writing on a bit of paper is not a crime which affects the imagination of the inexperienced. Had it been a malicious slander Phoebe would have realized the sin of it much more clearly; but the copy of her grandfather's signature did not wound her moral sense in the same way, though it was a much more serious offence. That Mr. May could have intended to rob him of the money appeared impossible to her; and no doubt the borrowing of the signature was wrong—very wrong. Yes, of course it was horribly, fatally wrong; but still ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... similar courses; but if he, on obtaining his release, instead of being disposed to conform to regularity of conduct, is only determined to practise more skilfully the very crime that was the cause of his commitment; or if, from his moral sense being deadened, in consequence of having heard others boast of their villainous exploits, he is ready to engage in new and more desperate attempts, the influence which his punishment may have had ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... old theory of Free-will. Hamilton erroneously identified this theory with the fact that we possess a moral sense. His resulting dilemma. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... interests and common sentiments, which tend to harmony and peace. The wisdom and ability of governments and of nations themselves are shown in devoting themselves to making the grounds of harmony and peace stronger than those of discord and war. Anyhow common sense and moral sense forbid differences of interests and tendencies to be set up as a principle upon which to establish general and permanent rivalry, and, by consequence, a systematic hostility and national enmity. And the further civilization and the connections between different people proceed with this development, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... her meaning wisely, and the Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate a nature throbbing with fervour which was held in restraint only by a delicacy of equal charm and beauty, and a lofty moral sense. But he was easily open to the influence of other men's opinions, and he had never been able to think of Ralston's smile without an inward twinge which had sometimes amounted to an actual tenor. Suppose he were merely being played with by a heartless woman, who found it minister to her vanity ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... citizens who might so far forget the rights of humanity as to engage in that wicked traffic it has long since by its municipal laws denounced the most condign punishment. Many of the States composing this Union had made appeals to the civilized world for its suppression long before the moral sense of other nations had become shocked by the iniquities of the traffic. Whether this Government should now enter into treaties containing mutual stipulations upon this subject is a question for its mature deliberation. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... unnecessary, unjustifiable, and morally wrong.... Even if utility could be proved, man has no right to attempt to benefit himself at the cost of injury, pain, or disease to the lower animals. The injury which the practice of vivisection causes to the moral sense of the individual and to humanity far outweighs any possible benefit that could be derived from it. Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, Professor in the Medical School of Harvard University, declared that 'vivisection deadens the humanity of the students.' Nothing which ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... falling timber. He is left as a material form; he is decidedly not left as a person. Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had ever seen or handled—his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will, his affections, his moral sense: with these he was a person; without them, he is a corpse. If, then, it is these unseen, intangible qualities, and not flesh and bones, muscle and "nerve structure," that constitute human personality, is it not rather ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... His house was full of pictures; there was not one among them which was not a copy of something really beautiful, and not one copy which had any beauty in itself. This man had not the sense of beauty, though he had the moral sense which led him always to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... truly a spartan band, the colored men and women. The naming of a few would be invidious to the many who were ever keenly alive to the proscription to which they were subject, and ever on the alert for measures to awaken the moral sense of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Some shadow or reflection of the body seems always to adhere to our thoughts about ourselves, and mental processes are hardly distinguished in language from bodily ones. To see or perceive are used indifferently of both; the words intuition, moral sense, common sense, the mind's eye, are figures of speech transferred from one to the other. And many other words used in early poetry or in sacred writings to express the works of mind have a materialistic sound; for old mythology was allied to sense, and the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... one. The lie, exaggeration, liking for rotten things—such is the exact picture in contemporary novels. I do not know what profit there is in literature like that, but I do know that the devil has not lost anything, because through this channel flows a river of mud and poison, and the moral sense became so dulled that finally they tolerated such books which a few decades ago would have brought the author to court. To-day we do not wish to believe that the author of "Madame Bovary" had two criminal suits. Had this ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... parents, guardians, and teachers in this matter is evident. The evil influence of drinking on young people was also stressed, medical and social workers being well aware of the importance of this factor. Alcohol consumption need not be excessive to undermine self-control and dull the moral sense. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... to notice that they all had their eyes fixed in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow. Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here, and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... are likewise almost in leaf: in two or three days more I may put forth my hand and pluck the topmost bough in its freshest green. These lilacs are very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of their prime. The heart, or the judgment, or the moral sense, or the taste is dissatisfied with their present aspect. Old age is not venerable when it embodies itself in lilacs, rose-bushes, or any other ornamental shrub; it seems as if such plants, as they grow only for ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in which hunger sharpens a man's perceptions, and makes him see the truth in a clearer light—but starvation, the slow, gnawing starvation, when the reserve is gone, and every organ, every muscle, every nerve cries out for food—it is of the devil. The starving man is a brute, with no more moral sense than the gutter cat. His mind follows the ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... intended to make a detailed analysis of the moral sense of Ptah-hotep and Ke'gemni, but it appears unnecessary; since they give their advice so clearly and simply, they may safely be left to speak for themselves. But as especially noteworthy I would ...
— The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni - The Oldest Books in the World • Battiscombe G. Gunn
... that are rivals to his own; and to them he attributes all the faults of art and all the vices of humanity. Each has its offence. Protestantism is made responsible for the extremes of individualism;[146] and Judaism, for the absurdities of its customs and the weakness of its moral sense.[147] I do not know which of the two is the more soundly belaboured; the second has the privilege of being so, not only in writing, but in pictures.[148] The worst of it is, these antipathies are apt to spoil the fairness of M. d'Indy's artistic judgment. It goes without ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... and many more, we have instances of the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker, (a trade by the by remarkable for the production ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... spirit than of interest in the maintenance of free institutions; but in regard to the latter they made the fatal mistake of believing our Buchanans, Cushings, and Touceys to be representative men. They were not aware how utterly the Democratic party had divorced itself from the moral sense of the Free States, nor had they any conception of the tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed convictions, traditions, and instincts of a people ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... intellectual. In all such action there is real pleasure, but the grand source of human happiness is the power of perceiving the moral notions of actions and characters. This, the Moral Sense, falls to be fully discussed later. Distinct from our moral sense is the Sense of Honour or Shame, when we are praised or condemned by others. The Sense of Decency or Dignity, when the mind perceives excellence of bodily and mental powers in ourselves or others, is also natural, and ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... are born without a moral sense. They are as unable to distinguish between right and wrong as a man who is colour blind, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... were the degenerate descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and from this strange backsliding it was hoped that they might now be reclaimed. With rare eloquence and skill did Eliot devote himself to the difficult work of reaching the Indian's scanty intelligence and still scantier moral sense. His ministrations reached from the sands of Cape Cod to the rocky hillsides of Brookfield. But he soon found that single-handed he could achieve but little over so wide an area, and accordingly he adopted the policy of colonizing his converts in village communities near the English towns, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... education for the whole community," he proceeded to commend the fact that "its foundation was laid deep in the framework of our common Christianity." He showed then how strong was the influence of the moral sense in his character: ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... discussion of duty rests on these probabilities. But where do the laws of mind and experience oppose the terrific tendencies of Abolitionism that have been portrayed? Are not the minds of men thrown into a ferment, and excited by those passions which blind the reason, and warp the moral sense? Is not the South in a state of high exasperation against Abolitionists? Does she not regard them as enemies, as reckless madmen, as impertinent intermeddlers? Will the increase of their numbers tend to allay this exasperation? Will ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... need not be of it; and the best way to make the world a better community to be in, and not so bad a place to be of, is not to shun, but to bring public opinion to bear upon its pursuits and its relaxations. Depend upon two things—that the theatre, as a whole, is never below the average moral sense of the time; and that the inevitable demand for an admixture, at least, of wholesome sentiment in every sort of dramatic production brings the ruling tone of the theatre, whatever drawback may exist, up to the highest level at which ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... he spoke, and his voice quivered with emotion. Standing, pale and lanky, amid his electrodes and his retorts, there was still something majestic about this man, who, amid all his stupendous good fortune, could still keep his moral sense undazzled by the glitter of his gold. Robert's weak nature had never before realised the strength which lay in those thin, firm ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... five feet four inches in height, round, ruddy, mellow and jocund. A complete absence or suppression of moral sense, together with health as perfect as an animal's, had rendered him insensible to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had never shed a tear save in excessive laughter, and sorrow had never yet struck a dart through ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... was characterised by physical as well as by psychical changes. (4) The simultaneous appearance of several phenomena was recognised, and much importance was attached to the intelligent action of a secondary consciousness. (5) Volition was unimpaired, moral sense increased, and suggested crime impossible. (6) Rapport was a purely artificial condition created by suggestion. (7) The importance of direct verbal suggestion was fully recognised, as also the mental ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... O leather-clad Fox? Can that be thy son, in the battlers mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... discover. And, in making that statement, it does not appear to me that I am confessing that I should have been debarred by "selfish interests" from making candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed by "sordid motives." I hope that even such a fragment of moral sense as may remain in an ecclesiastical "infidel" might have got me through the difficulty; but it would be unworthy to deny, or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty must have been created for me by the nature of my tenure. And let it be observed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... this "old blundering way," it seems to me, is its one-sidedness. It educates only the intellect. Is this the right way? Surely the moral nature is also educable. Indeed, if the mind is trained to act energetically, so much more should the moral sense be trained to control the workings of that mind. Then, since the world, we hope, is outgrowing battles, why is it considered essential that we inform ourselves so particularly, so minutely, so statistically, ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... with one charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and sadness. That realization of love the first time one experiences it is rather repugnant; we had dreamt of it as being so different, so delicate, so refined. It leaves a physical and moral sense of disgust behind it, just like as when one has happened to have put one's hand into some clammy matter and feels in a hurry to wash it off. You may rub it as hard as you like, but the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... deeply the blessings of the present. We have a Germany again, aunited, great, and strong country; and I call this a blessing, not only in a material sense, as giving, at last, to our homes a real and lasting security against the inroads of our powerful neighbors, but also in a moral sense, as placing every German under a greater responsibility, as reminding us of our higher duties, as inspiring us with courage and energy for the battle of the mind even more than for the battle ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately; to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater delicacy of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to the laws of the land or a commonplace against duelling. Yet such things would ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... upon which we were seated. "I had a second presentiment that we might want a second bottle—and here it is! Fill your glass; and let us establish ourselves in our respective positions—you to administer, and I to sustain, a severe shock to the moral sense. I think, David, this second bottle is even more deliciously brisk than the first. Well, and what did ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... a source of never-ending wonder to Fred Sanders how it was he could have been so wicked a lad, and how it was that his moral sense could have been so totally eclipsed for years. The gentle, winning words of Inez Hawthorne had first aroused his conscience, until finally it would not allow him to rest until he had ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... in Rebekah's integrity; the pathos of his situation; the bitter disappointment of Esau; Jacob's temptation, and the supreme wickedness of Rebekah in deceiving Isaac, defrauding Esau, and undermining the moral sense ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... neglect the result that in 1835 only 245,000 of the 2,245,144 slaves had a saving knowledge of the religion of Christ. He deplored the fact that unhappily the evil influence of the reactionaries had not been confined to their own circles but had to a lamentable extent "vitiated the moral sense" of other communities. The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices which subjected the free blacks to insult ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... of a virgin into prostitution, and the high prices paid by patrons for this initiation, but leave it obscure as to the nationality of the men who initiate girls into the life of a brothel slave. But Chinese in San Francisco do not hesitate to make the charge that Chinamen recoil, through moral sense or superstition, from deflowering a virgin, and that this horrible privilege is purchased at a special price by the white, not the yellow patrons of Chinese houses of ill-fame. Baker alley has probably been the scene of more terrible brutality of this ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... an old patriarch named Aaron, who is a saintly Jew made to do the dirty work of an abominable Christian usurer. In an artistic sense I think the patriarch Aaron as much of a humbug as the patriarch Casby. In a moral sense there is no doubt at all that Dickens introduced the Jew with a philanthropic idea of doing justice to Judaism, which he was told he had affronted by the great gargoyle of Fagin. If this was his motive, it was morally a most worthy one. But it is certainly unfortunate ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... him in a single generation from the stone to the iron age, demolished his old notions of the world, carried him on long journeys, and made him a different man. French brandy and English rum sapped his stamina, and the grand libertinage of the traders calloused whatever moral sense he had. His folklore, his religion, and his institutions made no progress after the trader had once ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... tremulous, and useless. There is a very disagreeable feeling in the back of his neck, and a spinning sensation about the brain. A queer rumbling seizes his ears. He has heard that "conscience makes cowards of us all." What mortal sin has he committed? His moral sense answers back, "None. You are only that poor creature, a bashful youth." And he bravely calls on all his nerves, muscles, and brains to help him through this ordeal. He sees the pitying eyes of the woman to whom he is talking turn away from his countenance (on which he knows that ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... never been troubled, and the example thus given to their subjects is one of the surest foundations of their influence and authority in Germany. The secret of this felicity, affection apart, is to be sought for in the strong moral sense of the Emperor regarding what he owes to himself and his people, but no less perhaps in the exemplary character of the Empress. As a girl at Primkenau she was a sort of Lady Bountiful to the aged and sick on the estate, and led there the simple life of the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... teaching of the Christian religion. My heart rebelled against it. I would not accept it. I became an infidel. A man can not accept an interpretation of God that does not appeal to the best that is in him. No man can accept a doctrine that darkens his moral sense, or that confuses the distinction between right and wrong. I would not accept the old interpretation because my soul rose in revolt against it. I shall never forget how, one evening in his study, a minister, who had outgrown the old traditions, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... deep-seated principles of humanity and chivalry in war. It had been done gradually and systematically—scientifically, in fact, and in the majority of cases it succeeded in producing a state of atrophy of the moral sense that was altogether admirable—from a ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... agnostic creed rejected as illogical. It was pitiful, this strong-minded woman reaching out for the things that less-endowed women accept without question. It was even more pitiful to see her, with her keen moral sense, violate all the conventions of English law and society in order to take up life with the man who stimulated her mind and actually made her one of ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... and intention, upon those laws which concern feeling and belief rather than outward practice. Judah Halevi's attitude is different. If the only thing of importance in religion were intention and motive and moral sense, why should Christianity and Islam fight to the death, shedding untold human blood in defence of their religion. As far as ethical theory and practice are concerned there is no difference between them. Ceremonial practice ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... criticism of life; his mind was philosophic; and in his own verse, inspired by Greek poetry, by Goethe and Wordsworth, he realized his definition. In his work, therefore, delicate melody and sensuous beauty were at first much less conspicuous than a high moral sense, though after the first the elements of external beauty greatly developed, often to the finest effect. In form and spirit his poetry is one of the very best later reflections of that of Greece, dominated by thought, dignified, and polished ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... will. And this doctrine, I confess, plants the vineyard of the Word with thorns for me, and places snares in its pathways. These may be delusions of an evil spirit; but ere I so harshly question the seeming angel of light—my reason, I mean, and moral sense in conjunction with my clearest knowledge—I must inquire on what authority this doctrine rests. And what other authority dares a truly catholic Christian admit as coercive in the final decision, but the declarations of the Book itself—though I should not, without struggles, and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "violation of the law of nature." "How any one born of a free Christian mother" could, notwithstanding, be a slave, and be obliged to remain such, passed their comprehension.[222] It was impossible for them to explain it." And, although "they were treated just like Christians," the moral sense of the people could not excuse such a flagrant crime ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... parties will soon coincide with the class sections. The upper part of PQRS is made up of the strata which possess comfort without luxury, but also culture, intelligence, and the best family mores. They are generally disciplined classes, with strong moral sense, public spirit, and sense of responsibility. If we are not in error as to the movement in civilized states of the present time from the lower into the upper strata of PQRS, by virtue of ambition and education, then it follows that the upper strata are being ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... good talk with C. last night. He says over and over, for months, for years, the same thing. Yet his guiding genius is his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth and justice; and he, too, says that there is properly no religion in England. He is quite contemptuous about 'Kunst,' also, in Germans, or English, or Americans;* ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—as that well-known passage beginning, "Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... postmaster announces that out of 100,000 letters a year, exactly so and so many come unaddressed, we think nothing of the matter—but when Quetelet counts so and so many criminals to every 100,000 people our moral sense is aroused since it is painful to think that *we are not criminals simply because somebody else has drawn the black spot.'' But really there is as little regrettable in this fact as in the observation that every year so and so many men break their legs, and so and so many die—in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... morning Mene Tekel brought fresh news from the Woolpack, and this time it was of a different quality, warranted to allay the seething of Joanna's moral sense. Sir Harry Trevor had sold North Farthing to a retired bootmaker. He was going to the South of France for the winter, and was then coming back to his sister's flat in London, while she went for a lecturing tour in the United States. The Woolpack was very definitely ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... mercy in brute nature. The hawk eats the sparrow; the fox devours the young rabbit; the cat leaps from under a bush and kills the mother robin while the young are left to starve in the nest. There is neither right nor wrong among the brutes because they have no moral sense. They do not kill for revenge nor torture for the love of cruelty, as Comrade Bannerman would in praying that the train be wrecked and the rich men burned to death in the ruin. The beasts can feel no pity, no sympathy, no regret, for nature ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... of her impulsive heart and hesitating mind, that he was filled with that tender compunction, that searching sense of his own shortcomings, which generous natures feel when they find they have underrated the generosity of others. But Amherst's was not an introspective mind, and his sound moral sense told him, when the first pang of self-reproach had subsided, that he had done his best by his wife, and was in no way to blame if her recognition of the fact had come too late. The self-reproach subsided; and, instead of the bitterness of the past, it left a softened memory which ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... is bad; the habit or vice, voluntarily entertained, is infinitely worse. If the one argues weakness, even culpable, the other betrays a studied contempt for God and the law, an utter perversion of the moral sense that does not even esteem virtue in itself; an appalling thralldom of the spirit to the flesh, an appetite that is all ungodly, a gluttony that is bestial. Very often it supposes a victim held fast in the clutches of unfeeling ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... depressing as one of his own morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of incompleteness and loss. With greater self-discipline, how much more he might have accomplished for himself and for others! Gifted, self-willed, proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew the unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression in the maddening poem, The Conqueror Worm. And if there were not happier and nobler lives, we might well say with ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... life which touches ours. Influence is like an atmosphere exhaled by each separate personality. Some men seem neutral and colorless, with no atmosphere to speak of. Some have a bad atmosphere, like the rank poisonous odor of noxious weeds, breeding malaria. If our moral sense were only keen and true, we would instinctively know them, as some children do, and dread their company. Others have a good atmosphere; we can breathe there in safety, and have a joyful sense of security. With some of these it is a local delicate environment, sweet, suggestive, like ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the mental conflicts which they endured, the fierce impulses of appetite and passion, more or less connected with and dependent upon the material condition of the bodily organs, under the onset of which their feeble moral sense, never really brought into a condition of health and vigor, was over-borne. These merciful views of the diseased condition and action of the soul in the commission of crime are not only in themselves right views for man to take of the crimes ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... and after a moment she arose from her chair and said in a determined voice: "No! I will not go to Kotlicki . . . and that which you have proposed to me is insulting and outrageous! Only in the theater can people lose so entirely their moral sense as to persuade others to base acts and purposely push them into the mire of degradation, so that they themselves may profit. You have miscalculated this time, my dear sir! I have not fallen so low as that. What hurts me is that you could think even for a moment that ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... himself to be a moral being; that is to say, a being who, placed between good and evil, can, of his own free will, adhere to the former and reject the latter, if he follows the dictates of his reason. Then the moral sense awakens in his mind the idea of a supreme blessing, of a progressive and infallible moral perfection, of a future final accord between virtue and felicity, and their necessary co-existence. Now, he cannot expect this supreme blessing from anything that surrounds him in nature, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... 'capital' has no small historic interest. That he had a sincere love of art and nature seems to me quite certain. There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture. We cannot re-write the whole of history for the purpose of gratifying our moral sense ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... requires no answer, I do not scruple to write a few lines to say how faithful and full a resume you have given of my notions on the moral sense in the "Pall Mall," and to make a few extenuating or explanatory remarks. (242/1. "What is called the question of the moral sense is really two: how the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is regulated. Why do we obey conscience or feel pain in disobeying ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin |
