Moral Reflection Quotes

Listen to some good poetry. You see? It keeps us from thinking we are only what our blatant appetites describe us as.

Repentance is another name for aspiration.

Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.

If we we were to intentionally set out to cause the extinction of a species, we should think about that. I would want there to be some consideration and reflection of a social consensus before we take that step.

In the fun house of today's metastisizing sports-entertainment megaplex, when every day brings another story revealing how these 'heroes' we create are fashioned from base clay, a pause might be in order to reflect on athletes who actually embodied the qualities we think we admire in the too-easily deified.

I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply a vehicle for private expression, but that it also exists for social examination. I firmly believe this.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application.

A word of advice is, when you judge someone, it doesn't define the person that you're judging. It defines you.

When you go watch "The Lord Of The Rings," you don't just buy a bag of popcorn, and go sit in the movie theater to watch where covetous people in our hearts deceive us, and then walk out the theater. That's the message that may be in that movie.

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.

I may be a descendant of Seth. I say to myself, What does [the story of Cain and Abel] teach me? So I go back to all the interpretations in the Talmud, which to me are a source of pleasure and joy. Then I say, maybe this story is not for then; maybe it's for now! It's possible for brothers to kill one another in civil wars. But most important, whoever kills, kills his brother. That's a moral conclusion that may not be there; but that must be my conclusion. Otherwise, why read it? Whoever kills, kills his brother.

My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.

This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?

When men comfort themselves with philosophy, 'tis not because they have got two or three sentences, but because they have digested those sentences, and made them their own: philosophy is nothing but discretion.

If we behave like those on the other side, then we are the other side. Instead of changing the world, all we'll achieve is a reflection of the one we want to destroy.

I know I haven't always done things the right way. I'm just trying to reflect on how to make myself better, how to become a better man, a better father, a better person, a better artist.

Such as every man is inwardly so he judgeth outwardly.

The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.

"I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you," said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders. "James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest."