Moral Depth Quotes

The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from...Circumcision of the heart.

Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy; the Animals.

Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness.

Steve Yarbrough is a writer of many gifts, but what makes Safe from the Neighbors such a magnificent achievement is its moral complexity. . . . Safe from the Neighbors does what only the best novels can do; after reading it, we can never see the world, or ourselves, in quite the same way.

A novel must show how the world truly is. Somehow, reveals the true source of our actions.

I often write about nonreligious people, and I try to find situations where their sense of humanity is restored or discovered. I think you can be a good person in many ways. And I think you often have to be careful that prayer can seem superficial, because it's a very complicated thing to love your neighbor as yourself.

You can't weigh the soul of a man with a bar of pig-iron.

It's always very fun to play someone who's somewhat enigmatic, but at the same time there are underpinnings of real concern for mankind. That was what 'Profit' had a lot of.

Ethics, politics and psychology are all far more difficult to understand now that we know the depths to which human nature can sink.

One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage.

As for 'Great Expectations', it is up there for me with the world's greatest novels, not least as it vindicates plot as no other novel I can think of does, since what there is to find out is not coincidence or happenstance but the profoundest moral truth.