David Sedaris Quotes

Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.

The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

My conscience is clear.

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

I know that charity covereth a multitude of sins; but it does not call evil good, because a good man has done it; it does not excuse inconsistencies, because the inconsistent brother has a high name and a fervent spirit; crookedness and worldliness are still crookedness and worldliness, though exhibited in one who seems to have reached no common height of attainment.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.

If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.

The logical upshot of liberalism's hatred of hypocrisy is that it is better for the liar to champion lying, the glutton to advocate gluttony, the adulterer to celebrate adultery, than for someone to preach the right thing if he himself occasionally does the wrong thing. Better to let your failings define you and be happy about it, than to let your ideals define you but then fall short of them, for that opens you up to the charge of hypocrisy.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Sin and shame ever go together; he that would be freed from the last must be sure to shun the company of the first.

There is no question of defence. I have always acted in accordance with the dictates of my conscience. I have nothing with which to reproach myself.

People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.

Oh but I'd pay anything to keep my conscience clean.I'm keeping my eyes on the the exit sign. Steady now.

Cheap thrill: moral outrage revels in its own innocence and in the guilt of the wicked Others.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

And that whole do-able/undo-able thing? Yeah. Need I point out that neither Ruth nor I have ever "done" anybody in our lives?

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.