Moral Resolve Quotes

This is the time that tries men’s souls, and many probably will be found wanting.

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

Virtue, like art, constantly deals with what is hard to do, and the harder the task the better the success.

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.

May God grant us the wisdom to discover right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley

You have to stand on your beliefs.

You stand up for what you believe in.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two o'clock in the morning kind. I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgement and decision.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage.

If we feel that any habit or pursuit, harmless in itself, is keeping us from God and sinking us deeper in the things of earth; if we find that things which others can do with impunity are for us the occasion of falling, then abstinence is our only course. Abstinence alone can recover for us the real value of what should have been for our help but which has been an occasion of falling. ... It is necessary that we should steadily resolve to give up anything that comes between ourselves and God.

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

I think it's a really admirable thing to be very sure of your own moral code and not waver from that.

I know I will never have an affair with a married man again.

So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Do you resolve to do the right and to love the true, depend upon it you will get no assistance from this world. Of its maxims, nine out of ten are false, and the other one selfish; and even that which is selfish has a lie at the bottom of it.

The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.