Moral Lessons Quotes:

He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

- John Irving

source: John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

topic: Lessons, Moral Lessons, Moral

Forgiveness is the highest and most difficult of all moral lessons.

- Joseph Jacobs

source: Joseph Jacobs (1896). “Jewish Ideals: And Other Essays”

topic: Forgiveness, Lessons, Moral, Moral Lessons

We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

- Joan Didion

source: FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 13, 2011

topic: Suicide, Ideas, Order, Moral Lessons, Magical Thinking

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

- Renata Adler

topic: Years, People, Lessons, Cautionary Tales, Kind People

The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

topic: Hurt, Children, Important, Moral Lessons

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

- Jodi Picoult

topic: Mean, Simple, Thinking, Moral Lessons, Heinous Crimes

Theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac should not be taken as literal fact. And the appropriate response is twofold: first, many, many people even to this day, do take the whole of their Scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not of literal fact, how should we take the story? As an alagory? Then an alagory for what? Surely, nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lesson? But what kind of morals could one derive from this appalling story?

- Richard Dawkins

source: "Richard Dawkins and God". "Background Briefing" with Kirsten Garrett on ABC Radio National, www.abc.net.au. November 26, 2006.

topic: Islamic, Taken, Sacrifice, Folds, Moral Lessons

A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.

- Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

topic: Long, Lessons, Moral, Moral Lessons

When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.

- Horace

topic: Teacher, Teaching, Lessons, Moral Lessons

We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth-if such a thing can even be said to exist.

- Isaac Asimov

source: Isaac Asimov (2012). “Foundation and Earth”, p.379, Spectra

topic: Writing, Cutting, Lessons, Moral Lessons

We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We're starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We've become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. We're spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book.

- Fisher Ames

topic: Children, Book, School, Spending Less, Moral Lessons

During the rest of my screen career, I am going to continue doing vampires as long as people sin. For I believe that humanity needs the moral lesson and it needs it in repeatedly larger doses.

- Theda Bara

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Believe, Careers, Long, Moral Lessons

There are those who believe that the value of a children's book can be measured only in terms of the moral lessons it tries to impose or the perfect role models it offers. Personally, I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it gives the reader nothing more than a smile or two. In fact, I happen to think that's huge.

- Barbara Park

topic: Children, Believe, Book, Moral Lessons

Prophet just means intellectual. They were people giving geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that sort of thing. We call them intellectuals today. There were the people we honor as prophets, there were the people we condemn as false prophets. But if you look at the biblical record, at the time, it was the other way around. The flatterers of the Court of King Ahab were the ones who were honored. The ones we call prophets were driven into the desert and imprisoned.

- Noam Chomsky

source: "The U.S. Role in the World". Interview with Harry Kreisler, globetrotter.berkeley.edu. March 22, 2002.

topic: Kings, Mean, Biblical, Moral Lessons, Ahab

Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

topic: Heart, Self, People, Moral Lessons

For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.

- Harold Ramis

source: Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

topic: Lessons, Pay, Scripts, Moral Lessons, Lip Service