"Moral obligation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Covenanting with God is enjoined by Him as the Supreme Moral Governor of all. That his Covenant should be acceded to, by men in every age and condition, is ordained as a law, sanctioned by his high authority,—recorded in his law of perpetual moral obligation on men, as a statute decreed by him, and in virtue of his underived sovereignty, promulgated by his command. "He hath commanded ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... understand that you have not been willing, after having created this model hospital, that some day through lack of support its doors should close and the wounded you have taken in be turned over to others; certainly those first subscribers undertook a sort of moral obligation to themselves not to permit the work to fail. But, none the less, it is admirable that it should be so. To give once is something, but it is little if one compares the value of the first gift ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... moral obligation that weighs with me is that which I feel under, to deal fairly by Donnelly and the School. You must not argue against this, as rightly or wrongly I am certain that if I deserted the School hastily, or if I did not do all that I can to requite Donnelly ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of the Senate: May I not express my earnest hope that the Senate of Tennessee will reconsider the vote by which it rejected the legislation extending the suffrage to women? Our party is so distinctly pledged to its passage that it seems to me the moral obligation ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... readily discern the fallacy of this reasoning and protest against it, when it is attempted to be introduced into the commerce of life. We see clearly that it would afford the means of refining away by turns every moral obligation. The adulterer might allow himself with a good conscience, to violate the bed of his unsuspecting friend, whenever he could assure himself that his crime would escape detection; for then, where would be the evil and misery, the prevention ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... question whether a germinal sense of moral obligation is found in the lower animals ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... claim on his bounty, should have been so many years without seeking his recompense. On asking the reason, the Quaker nobly answered to this effect, That the performance of his duty in saving the life of the hunted prince, was only a moral obligation, for the discharge of which God had amply repaid him by peace and satisfaction in his mind and conscience. And now, Sire, I ask nothing for myself, but that your Majesty would do the same to my friends that I did for you—set the poor pious sufferers ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The senate understood the importance of virtue in a republic, hence the severity of manners in the excessive development of the marital and paternal power. The dependence of the woman on her husband is found inscribed on every code. The seclusion prescribed by the East becomes a duty, a moral obligation, a virtue. On these principles were raised temples to modesty and temples consecrated to the sanctity of marriage; hence, sprang the institution of censors, the law of dowries, the sumptuary laws, the respect for matrons and all the characteristics of the Roman law. Moreover, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... relief; let not that man dare to boast of integrity, fidelity, or honour; let him not presume to recommend the preservation of our faith, or adherence to our confederates: that wretch can have no real regard to any moral obligation, who has forgotten those first duties which nature impresses; nor can he that neglects the happiness of his country, recommend any good ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... believer in Christianity, but he "did not wish to enforce prayer upon the Convention." Prayer, he argued, was a moral precept which could not be enforced without violating or infringing the "natural right" of the members to worship God each in his own way. If "we can enforce this moral obligation, then we have a right . . . . to make every member of this Convention go upon his knees fifty time a day." Mr. Kirkpatrick cared nothing for precedent. "This was a day of improvement. Let ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... men, except the two or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a disappointment in passion is an absolution from moral obligation. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... seem that we can do this. We are concerned with psychological phenomena, and their nature and significance are by no means beyond dispute. For example, there is the feeling of moral obligation, of which ethics has so much to say. What is this feeling, and what is its authority? Is it a thing to be explained? Can it impel a man, let us say, a bigot, to do wrong? And what can we mean by credit and discredit, by responsibility and free choice, and other concepts of the sort? All this must ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... ever to be shut out from fulfilling the duties of a wife and mother?—I wish my country to approve of my conduct; but, if laws exist, made by the strong to oppress the weak, I appeal to my own sense of justice, and declare that I will not live with the individual, who has violated every moral obligation which binds ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... our notice. As pointed out long ago by Aristotle, the suicide wrongs the state rather than himself. Where a man is still able to do any service to the state, in either a private or a public capacity, he is under a social, and, therefore, a moral obligation to perform that service, and, consequently, to withdraw from it by a voluntary death is to desert the post of duty. This consideration, of course, holds only where a man's life is still of value to society, but it should ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... may not have definitely phrased the responsibility, but he nevertheless shows his increasing realization of the obligations resting upon God. When we reach the later prophets we discern that his moral obligation upon God himself becomes more and more a determining factor. There appear glimpses of belief that God must not only fight for his people, but that he must suffer in their sufferings. It is of little consequence for our present purpose whether the suffering servant of Jehovah ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... receipt of bribes. But Mr. Hastings was forbidden it, first, by his official situation,—next, by covenant,—and lastly, by act of Parliament: that is to say, by all the things that bind mankind, or that can bind them,—first, moral obligation inherent in the duty of their office,—next, the positive injunctions of the legislature of the country,—and lastly, a man's own private, particular, voluntary act and covenant. These three, the great and only obligations that bind mankind, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... usually most purely intellectual, moral and social feeling was rising in Condorcet to that supremacy which it afterwards attained in him to so admirable a degree. He wrote essays on integral calculus, but he was already beginning to reflect upon the laws of human societies and the conditions of moral obligation. At the root of Condorcet's nature was a profound sensibility of constitution. One of his biographers explains his early enthusiasm for virtue and human welfare as the conclusion of a kind of syllogism. It ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... 'we agree to this,' 'we agree to that,' 'we agree to anything you suggest.' We haven't fought a single point. I'd have made those creditors whistle a bit before they saw yon five thousand pounds! But what's my father say? You heard him yourself—'moral obligation'—'might be fought!'—'get it settled.' He's botched ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... simply from the fact that, being courts of law, they must give to litigants before them the law; and the Constitution of the United States is law, and not, like most European political constitutions, a collection of rules and principles having only a moral obligation upon the legislative and executive departments of the government. Accordingly, each litigant, having the right to the highest law, may appeal from a statute of Congress, or any other act of any officer or department, State or national, and invoke ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... century. It is a profound analysis of law in its relation with government, customs, climate, religion, and commerce. The book is inspired with a spirit of justice and humanity; but it places the mind too much under the dominion of matter, and argues for necessity rather than liberty, thus depriving moral obligation of much of its absolute character. It is an extraordinary specimen of argument, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... may be questioned whether Johnson was entirely in the right. I suppose it will not be controverted that the difference in the degree of criminality is very great, on account of consequences: but still it may be maintained, that, independent of moral obligation, infidelity is by no means a light offence in a husband; because it must hurt a delicate attachment, in which a mutual constancy is implied, with such refined sentiments as Massinger has exhibited in his play of The Picture.—Johnson probably at another time would have admitted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... agents of a corporation are held to the general rule of law resting 'upon our great moral obligation to refrain from placing ourselves in relations which ordinarily excite a conflict between self-interest and integrity.' The directors and officers are the agents of the company, and while acting in that capacity for it cannot ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... totally in the possibility of arriving at any fundamental "truth" whatever, even in ethics. Several years ago, the then President of the Harvard "Philosophical Club" said in my hearing that he "saw no ground of moral obligation anywhere in the universe"; and this declaration was apparently assented to by every one of the fifteen or twenty members present. This very last summer, a recent graduate told me that he left college bewildered, depressed, and "disheartened," because he saw nowhere any ground of ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... of moral obligation apparently felt by all parents to provide heated and unhealthy amusements for their boys and girls during the holidays; extravagance in dress, following the same extravagance among their mothers; the increasing cost of education; the fuss and turmoil generally made over them—all ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... inflamed by the sight. This put it in my head that I really ought to go out and take a walk in the wind; so, I gave up the magnificent chapter for that day, entirely persuading myself that I was under a moral obligation to ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... our welfare. It wouldn't kill a Head to give up a night a month to ask us to meet possible friends, or to write a few letters of introduction. You agree with me in your heart, so it's no use pretending. It's a moral obligation, if it isn't legal, and I say part of the responsibility is hers if things go wrong. It's inhuman to leave a young girl alone in lodgings without even troubling to inquire if she has anywhere to go in her leisure hours. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... difference of degree: it is a difference in kind; and we desire to know on what ground this infallibility, which we do not question, but which is not proved, demands our belief. Very likely the Bible is thus infallible. Unless it is, there can be no moral obligation to accept the facts which it records: and though there may be intellectual error in denying them, there can be no moral sin. Facts may be better or worse authenticated; but all the proofs in the world of the genuineness and authenticity of the human handiwork ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... laws—laws which broadly and obviously mark the wisdom and benevolence of God.' One extract more: 'W. Y. expressed his admiration of the masterly manner in which Dr. Chalmers, in his "Bridgewater Treatise," has fixed on the atheist a moral obligation to inquire into the truth of religion; but, said he, might not the disciples of Irving, by the same rule, oblige us to an inquiry into the supposed evidences of their favourite doctrine that Christ is about to appear and to reign personally on earth? Might not even the Mahometan suppose ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... employs in its manifestation the method and material, not of one art only, but of all the arts. Music is but an arbitrary trifling with a few of life's majestic chords; painting is but a shadow of its pageantry of light and colour; literature does but drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral obligation, of virtue, vice, action, rapture, and agony, with which it teems. To "compete with life," whose sun we cannot look upon, whose passions and diseases waste and slay us—to compete with the flavour of wine, the beauty of the dawn, the scorching ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has befriended them since Marston's troubles began. She always-her large, loving eyes glowing with the kindness of her soul-heard Marston say they were just as free as people could be, and they should be free, too! Some people did'nt look at the moral obligation of the thing. Here, the good lady, blushing, draws the veil over her face. There is something more she would like to disclose if modesty did ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... philosopher," and he labors to prove that there can not be a personal God, or human spirit or self; that moral laws are simply "generalizations of utility," or, as Carl Vogt would have us believe, that self-respect, and not the will of God, is the basis and law of moral obligation. And Mr. Haeckel would have us believe that a few "monistic materialists" are the only men entitled to a hearing upon the question of "Evolution." So he excludes all true and intelligent Christians, for they are not and can not be ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... welfare roles. Then last year Congress enacted landmark welfare reform legislation demanding that all able-bodied recipients assume the responsibility of moving from welfare to work. Now each and every one of us has to fulfill our responsibility, indeed our moral obligation, to make sure that people who now must work can work. And now we must act to meet a new goal: two million more people off the welfare rolls ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... must never forget that the basic technique of organization is cooperation. What "A" knows that has helped his unit, or whatever he can do to assist "B" and "C" without materially depriving himself, it becomes his official and moral obligation to transmit. An officer can never understand his own command problem very well unless he knows, at least a little, of how things are going in other units. And the statement can be reversed. He cannot judge the problems of other ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... fiction of kinship is maintained. All the citizens of Athens are regarded as members of the same great tribe or family. But even in the time of Plato, whom we are accustomed to look upon as one of the great teachers of the world, there was no thought of any moral obligation to anybody who lived in Sparta, lived in any other city of Greece, and less was there any thought of moral obligation as touching or taking in the outside barbarian. So when the city grew into a nation, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... foundation of all true morality. Morality flows from principle. Let the principles of moral obligation become relaxed, and the practice of morality will not long survive the overthrow. No man can preserve his own morals, no parent can preserve the morals of his children, without the impressions of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... correct the vices of law, and soften it at length to their own temper. But we have to lament that in most of the late proceedings we see very few traces of that generosity, humanity, and dignity of mind, which formerly characterized this nation. War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... about by and by, but I apprehend that other repressive and tyrannical measures will be passed. These arbitrary acts of Parliament have had one lamentable result, they have made the people of the Colonies a community of smugglers. I am pained to say that we are losing all correct sense of moral obligation in matters pertaining to the government. No one thinks it disreputable to smuggle goods into the country because everybody feels that the laws are unjust. The ministry undertook to enforce the laws against smuggling not long since, by issuing Writs of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... in a following chapter) as well as several other opponents of the Majorists were unwilling to allow the statement, "Good works are necessary." Falsely interpreting the proposition as necessarily implying, not merely moral obligation, but also compulsion and coercion, they rejected it as unevangelical and semipopish. The word "must" is here not in place, they protested. Agricola, as well as the later Antinomians (Poach and Otto), rejected the expressions "necessarium, necessary" ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... yet produced. Oscar Wilde stopped where the religion of Goethe began; he was far more of a pagan and individualist than the great German; he lived for the beautiful and extraordinary, but not for the Good and still less for the Whole; he acknowledged no moral obligation; in commune bonis was an ideal which never said anything to him; he cared nothing for the common weal; he held himself above the mass of the people with an Englishman's extravagant insularity and aggressive ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... is, in advance of a question originating, or of its conditions being appreciated,—that a state may thereby do that which a citizen as towards the state does not do; namely, may voluntarily assume a moral obligation to do, or to allow, wrong. And it must be remembered, also, that many of the difficulties which arise among states involve considerations distinctly beyond and higher than law as international law now exists; whereas the advocated Permanent Tribunal, to which the ultra-organizers ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... at!—there is, in my opinion, but a small share of either honour or glory in the transaction. This, certainly, is permanent duty now, and peremptory duty also, with a witness! But it is a duty the moral obligation of which I cannot perceive; and I think that a man's first duty is to look ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and inclinations, and as these rest on physical causes, they can never of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to found the mental disposition of one's maxims on moral obligation, not on ready inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law, even though one may not like it; not on love, which apprehends no inward reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to be a command, and ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... impulses, over which he had not the faintest control, Peepi was plainly denuded of all moral obligation to virtue. He was no more a free agent, than the heart which beat in his bosom. Wherefore, his complaisant parliament had passed a law, recognizing that curious, but alarming fact; solemnly proclaiming, that King Peepi was ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... who year after year and generation after generation have lived in luxury on the income wrung from these poor creatures in the shape of Rent, without ever giving them a helping hand or a kind word in return—without even suspecting that they were under moral obligation to do so. Here is a Priesthood, the conscience-keepers and religious instructors of this fortunate class, who also have fared sumptuously and amassed wealth out of the tithes wrenched by law-sanctioned robbery from the products of this same wretched peasantry, yet never proffered them anything ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... at this. She had discovered that she must not look for too much from Gregory, but to realize that he had practically no sense of moral obligation, and could be influenced to do justice only by the expectation of obtaining ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... has received a vastly greater extension by the inclusion of the unborn generations of the future. This principle of duty to posterity is a direct corollary of the idea of Progress. In the recent war that idea, involving the moral obligation of making sacrifices for the sake of future ages, was constantly appealed to; just as in the Crusades, the most characteristic wars of our medieval ancestors, the idea of human destinies then in the ascendant lured thousands to ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... There would not be an act of violence, and I beg the House not to be led away by the fear of trifling complications following upon our insisting, not upon anything new, but upon that which we have been insisting upon for years past in a matter in which our moral obligation ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... NICHOLS, of Brattleboro, Vermont, spoke briefly on the absurdity of the popular idea of woman's sphere. She thought the sphere of sex could only be determined by capacity and moral obligation. She had once thought politics necessarily too degrading for woman, but she had changed her views. The science of government, it is said, is of divine origin; a participation in its administration can not then necessarily ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... here pause in passing, to remark on the shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to be met with in certain quarters, which, whilst admitting all that can be said as to the destruction for us of any moral obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the variety of moral distinctions. 'Each moment,' says Mr. Pater for instance, 'some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of himself, Casey was impressed. The very Spanish name of the prune orchard impressed him, and so did the formal business terms used by J. Paul Smith; and that "thanking you in advance" seemed to place him under a moral obligation too great to shirk. There was the note, too,— heavy green paper with a stag's head printed on it, and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... the cerebral and nervous organization, in which the gradual development of the mental and moral faculties are so intimately involved. They do not imply any, the least, relaxation of the force of parental authority, or any lowering whatever of the standards of moral obligation, but are, on the contrary, the most effectual, the surest and the safest way of establishing the one and of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... perseverance,—more of depth than width.[27] The moral conditions under which he lived were the love, the pursuit, and the practice of truth in everything; strength and depth, rather than external warmth of affection; fidelity to principles and to friends. He used often to speak of the moral obligation laid upon every man to think truly, as well as to speak and act truly, and said that much intellectual demoralization and ruin resulted from neglecting this. He was absolutely tolerant of all difference of opinion, so ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... church after service to-day I met the organist. He had no idea who I was, but gave his views very strongly as to Lord Blandamer's responsibilities for things in general, and for the organ in particular. We are, I suppose, under some sort of moral obligation for the north transept, from having annexed it as a burying-place. It used to be called, I fancy, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... if serious and intelligent persons, undertook to patronize these, in order to regulate them, perhaps they would be somewhat raised from the depths, to which they are now sunk. But such persons, know, that, with the weak sense of moral obligation existing in the mass of society, and the imperfect ideas mankind have of the proper use of amusements, and the little self-control, which men, or women, or children, practise, these will not, in fact, be ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... particular act, as to the choice between two alternative courses, as to the measure or limit of a recognized duty, or as to the grounds of preference when there seems to be a conflict of duties. A large proportion of these cases disappear under any just view of moral obligation. Most questions of conscience have their origin in deficient conscientiousness. He who is determined to do the right, the whole right, and nothing but the right, is seldom at a loss to know what he ought to do. But when the aim is to evade all difficult duties which can be ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... not utterly lacking in humanity," retorted Gerty, "and one has to be not to admit a moral obligation to one's hostess. Besides," she confessed, with smiling pleasantry, "I shall rather enjoy Ada Lawley's face when she sees my gown. She told me last night that she would never be caught wearing silver gauze again until she wanted to look every day as old as she really ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... publicly expressed by Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, in a Speech in 1811 on the admission of Louisiana: "If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... prescription, and only those would exempt themselves from it who were in the habit of making light of social obligations generally; and there would be then an evident justification for converting the moral obligation against bringing children into the world, who are a burden to the community, into a legal one; just as in many other cases of the progress of opinion, the law ends by enforcing against recalcitrant ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... CLARK. Those who would have a broader seal set upon manners, and the peculiarities of the mind set forth in pleasant grotesqueness, will smile at the 'Ollapodiana.' But all will profit by all; and we regard it as a literary obligation conferred upon the age, and carrying with it a moral obligation also, to multiply the copies of such writings as CLARK prepared. We express not our feelings, when we write of CLARK as an author. There are some of us who knew his heart better than he did, and who have never forgotten his worth. These monuments, that are erected to his fame from his own ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... hand, the only parties interested in the promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any author to believe as few as possible—or perhaps only one, in which case any promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay, in the following account of ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... professional capacity, however, he was guided by a high sense of honour and of moral obligation. In a case submitted for his consideration, which seemed to him to possess neither of these qualifications, he with a very grave face said to his client: "Pray what do you suppose me to be?"—"Why, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... this. She had discovered that she must not look for too much from Gregory, but to realise that he had practically no sense of moral obligation, and could only be influenced to do justice by the expectation of obtaining her ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... "No, sir," replied Louis, "it does not come within your line of duty, and devolves rather upon the minister of war; and very possibly he would object to executing such a commission; for how could I step forward as the protector of one who would shake off the moral obligation of an oath directly it suits his inclinations to doubt its legality? This affair gives me great uneasiness, and involves the most serious consequences. You will see that I shall be overwhelmed with petitions and pamphlets, demanding of me the revocation of the edict of Nantes." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Stephen, it's perfectly scandalous. Those two men, Andrew Undershaft and Lazarus, positively have Europe under their thumbs. That is why your father is able to behave as he does. He is above the law. Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone or Disraeli could have openly defied every social and moral obligation all their lives as your father has? They simply wouldn't have dared. I asked Gladstone to take it up. I asked The Times to take it up. I asked the Lord Chamberlain to take it up. But it was just like asking them to declare war on the ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... with great diligence, considering them as a part of the service of God; and, when done from this motive, she said they were as delightful as prayer itself. She also showed an "extreme anxiety to avoid every sin, and to discharge every moral obligation; she was most exemplary in the performance of every social and relative duty; exhibited great inoffensiveness of life and conversation; great meekness, benevolence, and gentleness of spirit; and avoided, with remarkable conscientiousness, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... that which he is under moral obligation or in duty bound to do. Ought is the stronger word, holding most closely to the sense of moral obligation, or sometimes of imperative logical necessity; should may have the sense of moral obligation or may apply ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... no larger knowledge of the moral law there is a more universal sense of moral obligation. Those pearls of Oman which Corydon designs for Amaryllis would not have adorned so noble a woman had they circled the neck of the Paphian Venus or ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... of high moral obligation, if not of necessity, for me to attend the Coles and Edwards courts. I have some cases in both of them, in which the parties have my promise, and are depending upon me. The court commences in Coles on the second Monday, and in Edgar on the third. Your court in Morgan commences on the fourth Monday; ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... as I may be wrong in my political or scientific theories. But I do mean that I think I am right; and that, if I am right, you cannot also be right when you affirm that this same action is wrong. This objective validity is the very core and centre of the idea of Duty or moral obligation. That is why it is so important to assert that moral judgements are the work of Reason, not of a supposed moral sense or any other kind of feeling. Feelings may vary in different men without any of them being in the wrong; red really is the same as green to a colour-blind person. ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... accept the post of Secretary of State, for even at that time everybody who was in the know was already aware that Mr. Wilson could only tolerate subordinates and not men with opinions of their own. Mr. Bryan, however, felt the moral obligation, at least to attempt to give his radical views a chance of succeeding, and declared, as he took over the post, that so long as he was Secretary of State the United States would never go to war. He even wanted this principle to be generally accepted by the rest of the world, and with this end ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... lying excuses, and more mendacious promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settlements; to prevaricate upon the terms; to resist equity, and devise specious fraud. When the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the debtor then thinks himself released from moral obligation, and brought to a legal game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. He disputes true accounts; he studies subterfuges; extorts provocatious delays; and harbors in every nook, and corner, and passage, of the law's labyrinth. At length the measure is ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... Crises often arise in the conduct of National affairs when cherished opinions must be sacrificed and new departures taken. But this necessity can never apply to that class of political questions closely and inseparably allied with moral obligation. Mr. Seward had himself taught the nation that conflict on questions involving the rights of human nature is irrepressible. The slavery against which he had warred so long and so faithfully had been abolished in vain if another form of servitude, even more degrading in some of its aspects, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... expect that it would even occur to our seven boys to give up what to them is a rare treat for the pleasure of spending an evening with us? As for the moral obligation, they have probably never so ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... an original power. Criticism of opposing views. Moral Obligation: connexion with Religion. Duties. Happiness: classification ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... as consistent with superstition as with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity."[56] To the feeling of dependence he has added the consciousness of moral obligation, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity."[57] "To these two facts of the inner consciousness the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of moral ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... foolishness, to those in whom their life was still green—Donec virenti canities abest!—Donec virenti canities abest! Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... his Tour in Scotland, relates the following circumstance, which shows that a sense of honour may prevail in those who have little regard to moral obligation:—After the battle of Culloden, in the year 1745, a reward of thirty thousand pounds was offered to any one who should discover or deliver up the young Pretender. He had taken refuge with the Kennedies, two common thieves, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... about two years behind. She doesn't know that a war is on. Far from here she pursues her peaceful way quite oblivious of the war. But the very fact that she is safe, that she has not been invaded, makes her moral obligation even greater than if she had been, because she is free to develop her industries normally and without loss. She can pay; she must pay. Canada's obligations are just as great as her resources; no more; no ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... practised in this country, in the name of vivisection, although we may concur with him in reprehending the performance of experiments on animals in illustration of truths already ascertained.... When the Cardinal (Manning) laid it down as the expression of a great moral obligation that we had no right to inflict NEEDLESS pain, he begged the whole question. By all means lay down and enforce any restriction that will prevent the infliction of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... 1851 placed posterity, equally with the Covenanters of that day, in oath-bound relation to God. A Public Covenant with God continues in its moral obligation until its terms are fulfilled. Are we lifting up our lives into relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ through our inherited Covenant? Are we fulfilling our sworn duties to our country, our Church, and our Lord? Are we using all lawful means to cause true religion to prevail? Are we ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... their former masters, and by the General Government, the author of the act of emancipation. That it was a wise, just, and providential act, fraught with good for all concerned, is now generally conceded throughout the country. That a moral obligation rests upon the National Government to employ its constitutional power and influence to establish the rights of the people it has emancipated, and to protect them in the enjoyment of those rights when they are infringed or assailed, is also ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... to us, because we see in her more of the conflict between passion and moral obligation, which is the essence of drama. Her scornful rejection of the advances of Monsieur (II, ii), though her husband palliates his conduct as that of "a bachelor and a courtier, I, and a prince," proves that she is no light o' love, and that ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... far from the Rock of Plymouth. I shall call him Otwin. I invited him to pass the winter as a guest in my house, where his conversation, manners, and deep enthusiastic and poetic feeling, and just discrimination of the moral obligation in men, rendered him an agreeable inmate. He had a saying and a text for almost everybody, but uttered all he said in such a pleasing spirit as to give offence to none. He was ever in the midst of those who came together to sing and pray, and was quite a favorite ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... they were at the turbulent junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, where crowds of Londoners, deeply unconscious of their own vulgarity, and of the marvellous distinction of Bedford Square, and of the moral obligation to harmonize socks with neckties, were preoccupying themselves with omnibuses and routes, and constituting the spectacle of London. The high-heeled, demure creatures were lost in this crowd, and Lucas and George were lost ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Naval Programme if I got the Government to give them a boat-slip at Ballyduck.—"Done!" you said, and we both went home.—I believe you knew that I had got constituency matters mixed up, that Ballyduck was inland, and that it was Ballycrow that I meant to say.—But you won't deny that you are under a moral obligation.' ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... abstruse and profound questions which amused the leisure of the schools of Athens? Could they hope that the precepts of philosophy should direct the life, and control the passions, of a despot, whose infancy had been taught to consider his absolute and fluctuating will as the only rule of moral obligation? [46] The studies of Chosroes were ostentatious and superficial: but his example awakened the curiosity of an ingenious people, and the light of science was diffused over the dominions of Persia. [47] At Gondi Sapor, in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... wish to dwell on the unselfish side of the question—the moral obligation of keeping to those forms of entertainment and games which give as little trouble as possible to servants,—I am sure that needs no ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... respects, is a most powerful institution; more powerful, as it has sometimes appeared to me, than the influence of most other human institutions put together, either for good or for evil, according to its character. Its example, its tone, whether of regard or disregard for moral obligation, is most important to human happiness; it is among those things which most affect the political morals of mankind, and their general morals also. I advert to this, because there has been put forth, in modern times, the false maxim, that there is one morality for politics, and another morality ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of the suffragist agitator are the same when she is dealing with a woman who is living at the charges of a husband or relative, and who recoils against the idea that she lies under a moral obligation to make to the man who works for her support some return of gratitude. The suffragist agitator will point out to her that such an obligation is slavery, and that the woman's suffrage cause is the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the guiding mind of the mistress will make itself felt in every department of the household without any undue worry to herself. The mistress of a small household who has things more under her immediate control, and whose income, no less than her sense of moral obligation, obliges her to look carefully after the outgoings, need not be told what a trial it is to be constantly on the watch to prevent waste. Probably she is compelled to leave a certain quantity of stores for general use; indeed, we doubt very much if there is anything ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... passions. It is true that the Freethinker has no invisible motives, but he has motives, and a visible restraint, which, if he reflects, cannot fail to regulate his actions. If he doubts about religion, he does not question the laws of moral obligation; nor that it is his duty to moderate his passions, to labor for his happiness and that of others, to avoid hatred, disdain, and discord as crimes; and that he should shun vices which may injure his constitution, reputation, and fortune. Thus, relatively to ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... history, the conversation between the President and Senator Harding about the distinction between "legal" and "moral" obligations, which was interesting at the time, takes on an added interest. Said Senator Harding: "If there is nothing more than a moral obligation on the part of any member of the league, what ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... when the thirst or intoxication of unlimited power had vitiated the social affections; and she transmitted to succeeding ages a pernicious example, by which immoderate ambition might be gratified, at the expense of every moral obligation, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... funeral. But they all have a right here, the professional burglar every whit as much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation is that they oughtn't to come under false pretences: the burglar is in honor bound not to pass himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is merely a moral obligation, established in the burglar's own interest. It does him no good to come unless he feels that he is playing the rules of the game, and one of these is confession. If he cheats there, he knows that he is cheating nobody but himself, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... trusted, and has larger opportunities of betraying the confidence reposed in him than is offered the merchant or the business agent. For the reason that he cannot be held to the same strict accountability which law and usage establish in mercantile business, he is under a moral obligation to fix his own rules of conduct by high standards and conform to them under all circumstances. Whatever the measure of his professional success—whether wealth and reputation crown his career, or disappointment and poverty be his constant and unwelcome companions—no taint of suspicion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... So long as moral obligation was based solely on the sanction of a supernatural world; so long as the condemnation of murder and theft and adultery was supposed to rest on the fact that God gave two tables of stone to Moses; so long as brotherhood and hope and trust ascribed their charter to an incarnate ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... (De Legibus Naturae, 1672) turns to experience with the questions, In what does morality consist? Whence does it arise? and What is the nature of moral obligation? and finds these answers: Those actions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, which promote the common good (commune bonum summa lex). Individual welfare must be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part. The psychological ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to the redemption in bonds. There is the moral obligation, on the part of the United States, which has issued its notes payable in coin, but for reasons of public policy does not pay in coin, to give to its creditors its notes bearing interest in place of coin. The United States ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... literary institution should be a safe resort, and no other advantages will, in the common estimation, compensate for defect and failure in this particular. The relations which every individual student sustains to God and to eternity, call imperiously and aloud, that the great principles of moral obligation, the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, the methods of the Divine administration, and the solemnities of eternal retribution, should be kept before him, in all their significancy, and enforced by the constraining motives of the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith |
