Richard Baxter Quotes

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

We should reserve the notion of 'morality' for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse. Some people use the term 'morality' differently, of course, but I think we have a scientific responsibility to focus the conversation so as to make it most useful.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

There's right and there's wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.

Life is moral responsibility.

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

Prudence reproaches; conscience accuses.

There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.

His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.

Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

We are not responsible for the behavior of anyone that goes contrary to what we teach, any more than the Pope of Rome or the Archbishop of Canterbury or a religious leader who teaches moral law and values can be charged with the errant behavior of a parishioner or congregant who may violate their moral teachings. That is on the individual.

Genius does not excuse evil.

The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

In my heart, I never called one wrong.

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds.

Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.

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

If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.

Faith teaches that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself