Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.

The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

The beast in us must be[78] wheedled: ethic is necessary, that we may not be torn to pieces.

Law is the highest reason implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite.

How can you qualify the difference between a sin and a lie.

Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful.

...Perses, hear me out on justice, and take what I have to say to heart; cease thinking of violence. For the son of Kronos, Zeus, has ordained this law to men: that fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.

Morality may exist in an atheist without any religion, and in a theist with a religion quite unspiritual.

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

A thing is good because it is good, not because it is natural. A thing is bad because it is bad, not because its artificial. It is not a damn iota better to be bitten by a rattlesnake than shot by a gun.

I think moral philosophy is speculation on how we ought to live together done by people who have very little clue how people work. So I think most moral philosophy is disconnected from the species that we happen to be. In fact, they like it that way. Many moral philosophers insist that morality grows out of our rationality, that it applies to any rational being anywhere in the universe, and that it is not based on contingent or coincidental facts about our evolution.

We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.

To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.

Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.

If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours.

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.