Rigid Morality Quotes

Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.

Growing up in Wales was a pretty Draconian experience with religion.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and hardened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must ..... eventually ..... fall.

Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.

From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England, he had a Spartan struggle for life.

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

I have my principles. I'd rather die than change my principles.

Life is a joyous thing essentially, but when you bind life by all these rigid moralities and traditions, and dogmas and creeds, then there is misery.

Morality, when formal, devours.

Our ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality.

The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his own.

Too rigid scruples are concealed pride.