If society is a ship, it appears to many to be firmly at anchor in moral waters. Perhaps this isn't so.
Good people suddenly don't turn bad.
Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain.
The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.
Values are not trendy items that are casually traded in.
Virtue that wavers is not virtue.
Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life.
Moral Education is the source of that spiritual equilibrium on which everything else depends and which may be compared to that physical equilibrium or sense of balance, without which it is impossible to stand upright or to move into any other position.
Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.
I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress.
Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. The actions of just and pious men do not darken in their middle course.
