Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
I find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That's why I find war so hard to bear. It's the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain. So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm.
It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity.
I believe that, at times, if some of us are almost too critical of our society, it's because our sensitivity and our concern for justice makes us aware that our nation falls terribly short of its highest potential.
The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.
You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.
If our hearts are ready for anything, we will spontaneously reach out when others are hurting. Living in an ethical way can attune us to the pain and needs of others, but when our hearts are open and awake, we care instinctively.
In 'Reclaiming Virtue,' I argue that we have had an element missing in moral education. That element is 'affect.' Affect is simply the technical word for feeling or emotion.
If you ever get to the place where injustice doesn't bother you, you're dead.
Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach.
Injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others.
There seems to be something in the human soul that causes us to think less of ourselves every time we do something wrong... And maybe it is good for us to feel that way. It may make us more sensitive to what we do wrong and move us to repent and grow.
It comes with age. I can't watch movies that are inhumane.
Blunted unto goodness is the heart which anger never stirreth, but that which hatred swelleth, is keen to carve out evil.
Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.
A boy's mind is not so easily sullied as a girl's.... Undesirable knowledge is not an equal shock to the moral nature.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
Measure your growth in grace by your sensitiveness to sin.
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.
In a way, the most morally troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer morally troubling.
The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.
I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
The question of integrity will get finer and finer and more delicate and more beautiful.
The subjectivist in morals, when his moral feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek harmony by toningdown the sensitiveness of the feelings.
