Moral Strength Quotes

Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines.
That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. ~ Jean Webster

It showed me how any country's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. ~ Malcolm X

An important consequence of giving highest priority to the metaphor of Moral Strength is that it rules out any explanations in terms of social forces or social class. ~ George Lakoff

The traditions of ... bygone times, even to the smallest social particular, enable one to understand more clearly the circumstances with contributed to the formation of character. The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. Therefore it is well to know what were the chains of daily domestic habit which were the natural leading-strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go alone. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

What is good is irrepressible. ~ Robert A. Giacalone

Since I have an aversion to movies in which people say grace at the dinner table (not to the practice but to how movies use it to establish the moral strength of a household), the opening night montage of Sunday-night supper in one home after another in Waxahachie, Texas in 1935 a whole community saying grace made me expect the worst. ~ Pauline Kael

And morally, maybe, if there's such a thing as moral exhaustion. There is such a thing, he decides. You start by being idealistic, morally strong if you will, but then the rock of your moral strength is eroded, bit by bit, until you're, well, exhausted, and you do things that you never thought you would. Or you do things that you always feared you would. Or something like that. You'd think that there would be a breaking point - a decisive moment - but there is no single moment or event that you can put your finger on. No, it's not that dramatic - it's the dull, monotonous process of erosion. Maybe ~ Don Winslow

Since the Strict Father model is what holds Strict Father morality together, interference with the pursuit of self-interest threatens the foundations of the whole Strict Father moral framework - from the efficacy of moral strength to the validity of the moral order. The ~ George Lakoff

Oftentimes I have hated in self-defense; but if I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon. ~ Kahlil Gibran

It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late. ~ Pearl S. Buck

By the middle of the eighteenth century the black slave had sunk, with hushed murmurs, to his place at the bottom of a new economic system, and was unconsciously ripe for a new philosophy of life. Nothing suited his condition then better than the doctrines of passive submission embodied in the newly learned Christianity. Slave masters early realized this, and cheerfully aided religious propaganda within certain bounds. The long system of repression and degradation of the Negro tended to emphasize the elements of his character which made him a valuable chattel: courtesy became humility, moral strength degenerated into submission, and the exquisite native appreciation of the beautiful became an infinite capacity for dumb suffering. The Negro, losing the joy of this world, eagerly seized upon the offered conceptions of the next; the avenging Spirit of the Lord enjoining patience in this world, under sorrow and tribulation until the Great Day when He should lead His dark children home, - this became his comforting dream. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

One derives great moral strength from a cup of coffee, I said. ~ Chaim Potok

It is not the armed forces which can protect our democracy. It is the moral strength of democracy which alone can give any meaning to the efforts at military security. ~ Max Lerner

But to conservatives whose value system gives priority to Moral Strength, the problem of drugs is the personal lack of the moral strength to just say no. It is a problem of personal values, not of social change or drug treatment centers. ~ George Lakoff

After each creative act one has to be sustained by one's strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don't know what, lest one tumble. ~ Etty Hillesum

Character consists of the moral awareness and strength to know the good, love the good and do the good. ~ Thomas Lickona

When was in prison I admired him for his moral strength ...
Of his period in power I can see few results. Apartheid no longer exists, at least to all appearances, but no one understands what the new government in South Africa is doing. ~ Mengistu Haile Mariam

The workmen's revolution, with the terrors of destruction and murder, not only threatens us, but we have already been living upon its verge during the last thirty years, and it is only by various cunning devices that we have been postponing the crisis ... The hatred and contempt of the oppressed people are increasing, and the physical and moral strength of the richer classes are decreasing: the deceit which supports all this is wearing out, and the rich classes have nothing wherewith to comfort themselves. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Politics is an art and not a science, and what is required for its mastery is not the rationality of the engineer but the wisdom and the moral strength of the statesman ~ Hans J. Morgenthau

Any county's moral strength, or its moral weakness, is quickly measurable by the street attire and attitude of its women - especially its young women. Wherever ... spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon ... material things, invariably the women reflect it. ~ Malcolm X

In all the houses keys to memorizing objects and feelings had been written. But the system demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In your absolute defiance against tyranny, lies and all odds; lies therein, your true moral strength. Rise! ~ Mamur Mustapha

If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution. ~ Michael S. Horton

Temptations, like misfortunes, are sent to test our moral strength. ~ Margaret Of Valois

If we would take the traits that characterized the Pilgrims and make them our own, we could regain hope. We could recover the spiritual and moral strength that we have lost. We could offer a thrilling challenge to our young people. ~ Billy Graham

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

It took all of her moral strength not to kick him - just a little - while he was so conveniently at her feet. ~ Karen Hawkins

To burn the ideal of a great love into the soul of youth in letters of fire - that is to give him a real moral strength. ~ Ellen Key

Western civilization has not yet learned the lesson that the energy we expend in 'getting things done' is less important than the moral strength it takes to decide what is worth doing and what is right to do. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Nobody is good or bad. They are either strong or weak. Strong people stick to their morals, no matter what the trials and tribulations. Weak people, many a times, do not even realise how low they have fallen. ~ Amish Tripathi

Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

She looked at me with gentle indignation. She was what we have after sixty million years of the Cenozoic. There were a lot of random starts and dead ends. Those big plated pea-brain lizards didn't make it. Sharks, scorpions and cockroaches, as living fossils, are lasting pretty well. Savagery, venom and guile are good survival quotients. This forked female mammal didn't seem to have enough tools. One night in the swamps would kill her. Yet behind all that fragility was a marvelous toughness. A Junior Allen was less evolved. He was a skull-cracker, two steps away from the cave. They were at the two ends of our bell curve, with all the rest of us lumped in the middle. If the trend is still supposed to be up, she was of the kind we should breed, accepting sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness. But there is too much Junior Allen seed around. ~ John D. MacDonald

The argument that personal moral views should not be imposed on others when it comes to lawmaking is incoherent and misleading. It is incoherent because a great deal of law implicitly "imposes" a particular moral view on the wider society. It would be disingenuous to pretend that the legalization of abortion on demand or euthanasia does not impose a certain moral view on the rest of society. This is especially true when arguments for abortion and euthanasia are based on rights. The appeal to rights is a moral argument, and it is this appeal to moral authority that gives force to laws enshrining rights. ~ George Cardinal Pell

They are inked all over my skin;
The words I wish that I could have said,
The things I wish that I could have changed,
The wounds, the scars, the struggles, and all the names of those who once did me wrong.
The way I have it all written on my body has strengthened that soul of mine within,
It makes me unstoppable and much more proud of my journey, how far I've become, and of the woman I grew up to be… ~ Samiha Totanji

Whatever you do for Christ, throw your whole soul into it. Do not give Christ a little slurred labor, done as a matter of course now and then; but when you do serve him, do it with heart, and soul, and strength. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A story is told as much by silence as by speech. ~ Susan Griffin

GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportioned to the quantity of matter they contain-the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Narcissistic fathers leave their daughters with deep doubts about whether a man can love them, since the first important man in their life was so in love with himself that he had no love left for them. If you are a daughter of a narcissistic father you may have withdrawn from men and bound yourself to mother, either overtly or emotionally. Or you may be engaged in a self-destructive attempt to be his kind of girl, whatever that is, as you try desperately to extract his love. Perhaps you have transferred this into a masochistic position with other men, finding a narcissistic man incredibly attractive as you try to master the mystery of winning his love. And narcissistic men appeal to you because you wish you could be that way yourself - assertive, not giving a damn, self-important - but you lack the confidence to do it yourself so you identify with the man who has their quality, even if it's at your expense. (I have often seen this revealed in those instances where a woman has suffered through a degradingly submissive and abusing relationship with a man, or a series of men, and then, gaining the strength to break that kind of bondage, violently overturns the tables and abuses that man, or the next man in her life, as degradingly as she was misused. It's not just revenge, but the release of hidden desire to be powerful and to be able to control father and make him beg for her love.) ~ Howard M. Halpern

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create. ~ Maria Montessori

In Christ we are given the courage and strength to change the world ~ Michael W. Smith

What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to the ceiling, on every stair another stairway is set in negative, over the roofs of the houses hang layers of rocky terrain like skies with clouds. We do not know if the inhabitants can move about the city, widening the worm tunnels and the crevices where roots twist: the dampness destroys people's bodies and they have scant strength; everyone is better off remaining still, prone; anyway, it is dark.
From up here, nothing of Argia can be seen; some say, "It's down below there," and we can only believe them. The place is deserted. At night, putting your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam. ~ Italo Calvino

Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else. ~ Martin Buber

That was Leah, before the fade came. Before the sea mist of depression rolled in without much warning and dampened her, softened her so that she had less strength. She had always been sensitive - that was the word he'd heard for her and it was the right word. She saddened at the lobsters that Tom hauled ashore; she bruised, as ripe fruits do ...
Still. There is something in Leah. A flash of metal. A piece of grit in the pearl. ~ Susan Fletcher

John J. Hendee of Blackman, Michigan, argued that he was entitled to a job simply because he was "governed by the principles" outlined on an enclosed card. Labeled, "God's Commands," the manifesto called on its bearers to worship God, tell the truth, abstain from "intoxicating drinks," and avoid marrying "blood relation[s]." The list of commandments ended with the warning: "Waste not your strength in any unnatural manner" - in other words, do not masturbate. ~ Harold Holzer

You have to keep a little bit extra fat on the body. The strength and conditioning guy is always all over me about it, but it seems to make guys bounce off me better. ~ Tony Amonte

Political realism is based upon a pluralistic conception of human nature. Real man is a composite of "economic man," "political man," "moral man," "religious man," etc. A man who was nothing but "political man" would be a beast, for he would be completely lacking in moral restraints. A man who was nothing but "moral man" would be a fool, for he would be completely lacking in prudence. A man who was nothing but "religious man" would be a saint, for he would be completely lacking in worldly desires.
Recognizing that these different facets of human nature exist, political realism also recognizes that in order to understand one of them one has to deal with it on its own terms. That is to say, if I want to understand "religious man," I must for the time being abstract from the other aspects of human nature and deal with its religious aspect as if it were the only one. Furthermore, I must apply to the religious sphere the standards of thought appropriate to it, always remaining aware of the existence of other standards and their actual influence upon the religious qualities of man. What is true of this facet of human nature is true of all the others. No modern economist, for instance, would conceive of his science and its relations to other sciences of man in any other way. It is exactly through such a process of emancipation from other standards of thought, and the development of one appropriate to its subject matter, that economics has developed as an autonomous theory of th ~ Hans J. Morgenthau

David encouraged himself in the Lord"

Prevailers encourage themselves - they find motivation within themselves.
Encouragement is not an external thing, but internal grace. Prevailers don't leave the responsibility of recovering from a setback to others. They have a strong relationship with God and in times of affliction, He is the closest source of strength to them ~ EastwoodAnaba

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose. ~ Jean Anouilh

My strength was taught and lived. I am once in a lifetime woman who is compassionate, fierce, and independent. I have built myself from pieces over and over again. I wear pain like smiles because I have hidden my weakness with God. ~ Rafia Munir

Oh, you doubtful man, you Peter of little faith, who
are moved by each wind and sink easily. You are your-
self the cause of all your diseases, because your faith is so little and feeble, and your own evil thoughts are your enemies. Moreover, you have hidden within yourself a magnet which attracts those influences which correspond to your will, and this celestial magnet is of such power that for more than a hundred, or even thousands of miles, it attracts that which you desire out of the four elements.

Moral : Purify your desires. Save the seed. ~ George Carey Foster

But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. ISAIAH 40:31 NIV ~ Various

It is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Senator Douglas was very small, not over four and a half feet height, and there was a noticeable disproportion between the long trunk of his body and his short legs. His chest was broad and indicated great strength of lungs. ~ Henry Villard

To any one for whom wild things are something more than a pleasant diversion, (conservation) constitutes one of the milestones in moral evolution. ~ Aldo Leopold

I don't just do music for the clubs, I do music for the struggle. I do music for everyday niggas, the kids who ain't got no sense of direction. I'm trying to restore some of the morals back into the game, as far as the street. ~ Young Jeezy

We can reach our potential, but to do so, we must reach within ourselves. We must summon the strength, the will, and the faith to move forward - to be bold - to invest in our future. ~ John Hoeven

If someone had told Allie that she would commit a premeditated act of murder, she would not have believed it. She would have spouted off all the reasons how she could never be capable of such a thing - that no matter how dire the circumstances, she would find a better way. She was so naive, so arrogant to think that the laws of necessity and unthinkable circumstance could not apply to her. She could tell herself that this was an act of mercy, but that would be a lie. This was an act of war. An act of terrorism. It was nothing less than an assassination.
If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.
So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her innocence if it meant she might save the world? ~ Neal Shusterman

Relatively speaking, science can provide reliable standards to verify truth in a physical, material sense, but values are not its strength. What one generation takes to be true is debunked and made obsolete by new discoveries. ~ Ilchi Lee

Few serve truth in truth because only few have the pure will to be just, and of those again very few have the strength to be just. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We each have a moral obligation to conserve and preserve beauty in this world; there is none to waste. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

He's made me appreciate myself more, love myself more, and as a result, I've come to see him as more than just a great athlete, a charismatic performer.
Nikolai Kotova is the sum of his brothers and sister. And more.
He is selfless, loyal, dedicated and wholly determined - the most responsible twenty-six-year-old, the most mature man. He is power and strength. But most importantly, he is love. And family.
He kisses me again, his hand warming the back of my neck. Whatever happens, just know that the parts of my life with you have been my favorite. ~ Krista Ritchie

No, no! The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing
only he His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. ~ Matthew Arnold

who are brave in ways that people often can't see on the outside - doing what's needed for their children and themselves. Your strength amazes ~ Vivian Arend