Khaled Hosseini Quotes

Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo.

Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency of sin.

The eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not be found out" is despicable, but nevertheless, it is the one thing you can never get away from.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them are abomination …

One of the effects of law, then, seems to be, instead of teaching men justice, and inspiring them with a love for it, but to animate their craft, deepen their duplicity, lengthen out the labyrinths of their contrivances, and supply them with a practical villainy, of which they had, perhaps never, dreamed themselves capable.

Ethics are pre-determined and a matter of discovery, not a evolved concept.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

Sin is the mother, and shame the daughter of lewdness.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.