William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

A regard for reputation and the judgment of the world may sometimes be felt where conscience is dormant.

There's this whole sense of judgment and who's right and who's wrong and who's moral and who's going to be punished.

One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality

Genius does not excuse evil.

A fool is a person who knows the difference between right and wrong, and chooses to do wrong.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

Hypocrisy is bad, but it's not the worst vice in the world. If I declared “murder is wrong” and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites ' particularly in Hollywood ' believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

There is one court whose findings are incontrovertible, and whose sessions are held in the chambers of our own breast.

Before thou reprehend another, take heed thou art not culpable in what thou goest about to reprehend. He that cleanses a blot with blotted fingers makes a greater blur.

Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.

There are some things we should feel guilty about, but the guilt feelings should attach to the deed, not to the doer.

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone.

Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.

To take responsibility for one's own actions, good and bad, is something else.

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.

The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

They judge lest they be judged.