Moralist Sentence Examples

They are no clamorous expressions of anger at the discrepancies and contrasts of humanity, but plain, solemn pictures of conditions of life, which neither the politician nor the moralist can deny to exist, and which they are imperatively called upon to remedy.

Even their trivialities have their use; their endless anecdotes respecting the personal habits of the subjects of their biographies, if valueless to the historian, are most acceptable to the archaeologist, and not unimportant to the economist and moralist.

The attempt to Christianize the old Platonic list of virtues, which we have noticed in Augustine's system, was probably due to the influence of his master Ambrose, in whose treatise De officiis ministrorum we find for the first time an exposition of Christian duty systematized on a plan borrowed from a pre-Christian moralist.

The petty-bourgeois moralist thinks episodically, in fragments, in clumps, being incapable of approaching phenomena in their internal connection.

The non-empirical moralist will not of course admit that duty to the community or to mankind is a final definition of the ethical ideal.

Everywhere, except in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Underworld is the old Hebrew inane abode of all the dead, and therefore a negligible quantity for the moralist.

The best work of the Belgian romanticists is in the rich and picturesque prose of the 16th century romance of Charles de Coster (see DE Coster), and in the melancholy and semi-philosophical writings of the moralist Octave Pirmez.

It was from Helvetius that he learnt that, men being universally and solely governed by self-love, the so-called moral judgments are really the common judgments of any society as to its common interests; that it is therefore futile on the one hand to propose any standard of virtue, except that of conduciveness to general happiness, and on the other hand useless merely to lecture men on duty and scold them for vice; that the moralist's proper function is rather to exhibit the coincidence of virtue with private happiness; that, accordingly, though nature has bound men's interests together in many ways, and education by developing sympathy and the habit of mutual help may much extend the connexion, still the most effective moralist is the legislator, who by acting on self-love through legal sanctions may mould human conduct as he chooses.

Aurelius is, above all things, a practical moralist.

In La Vision (1405) she tells her own history, by way of defence against those who objected to her pretensions as a moralist.

In Book IV., comprising the famous tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth satires, the author appears more as a moralist than as a pure satirist.

But it is characteristic of his strong nature that, where he does betray any sign of human sympathy or tenderness, it is for those who by their weakness and position are dependent on others for their protection - as for " the peasant boy with the little dog, his playfellow," 1 or for " the home-sick lad from the Sabine highlands, who sighs for his mother whom he has not seen for a long time, and for the little hut and the familiar kids."2 If Juvenal is to be ranked as a great moralist, it is not for his greatness and consistency as a thinker on moral questions.

Annaeus Seneca, who combined the parts of a moralist and a money-lender, had abruptly recalled large loans made from his private wealth to British chiefs.

Moreover, the belief that the justice of punishment depends upon the responsibility of the criminal for his past offences and the admission of the moral consciousness that his previous wrong-doing was freely chosen carries with it, so it is argued, consequences which the libertarian moralist might be willing to accept with reluctance.

Indeed, an important part of Augustine's work as a moralist lies in the reconciliation which he laboured to effect between the anti-worldly spirit of Christianity and the necessities of secular civilization.

He can hardly be called a " moralist "; and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of philosophic penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not even apparent coherence.

It was not his place, as a practical philanthropist, to dwell on the defects in this coincidence; 2 and since what men generally expect from a moralist is a completely 1 This list gives twelve out of the fourteen classes in which Bentham arranges the springs of action, omitting the religious sanction (mentioned afterwards), and the pleasures and pains of self-interest, which include all the other classes except sympathy and antipathy.

With Price, again, he holds that rightness of intention and motive is not only an indispensable condition or element of the rightness of an action, but actually the sole determinant of its moral worth; but with more philosophical consistency he draws the inference - of which the English moralist does not seem to have dreamt - that there can be no separate rational principles for determining the " material " rightness of conduct, as distinct from its " formal " rightness; and therefore that all rules of duty, so far as universally binding, must admit of being exhibited as applications of the one general principle that duty ought to be done for duty's sake.

Finally it has become apparent that many problems hitherto left for political economy to solve belong more properly to the moralist, if not to the moral philosopher, and it may be confidently expected that with the increased complexity of social life and the disappearance of many sanctions of morality hitherto regarded as inviolable, the future will bring a renewed and practical 1 Cf.

I found that mad moralist this morning in the kitchen garden yonder, and I heard the whole story.

The principle of perfection is a new one, at once more rational and comprehensive than benevolence and sympathy, which in our view places Ferguson as a moralist above all his predecessors."

With the completion of the three books of Odes he cast aside for a time the office of the vates, and resumed that of the critical spectator of human life, but in the spirit of a moralist rather than a satirist.

From this principle, it follows (I) that the distinction between right and wrong is part of the constitution of human nature; (2) that morality stands apart from theology, and the moral qualities of actions are determined apart from the arbitrary will of God; (3) that the ultimate test of an action is its tendency to promote the general harmony or welfare; (4) that appetite and reason concur in the determination of action; and (5) that the moralist is not concerned to solve the problem of freewill and determinism.

These birds, highly prized from the first, reprobated by the moralist, and celebrated by more than one classical poet, in the course of time were brought in great number to Rome, and ministered in various ways to the luxury of the age.

Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating.

The English moralist with whom Kant has most affinity is Price; in fact, Kantism, in the ethical thought of modern Europe, holds a place somewhat analogous to that Kant.

Looking at the problem in this way, even a moralist who does not expect theology to be the instrument of social revival, might still ask whether the sympathetic instincts will not necessarily be already developed to their highest point, before people will be persuaded to accept the religion, which is at the bottom hardly more than sympathy under a more imposing name.

As a moralist and a guide to the conduct of life - an aspect of Goethe's work which Carlyle, viewing him through the coloured glasses of Fichtean idealism, emphasized and interpreted not always justly - Goethe was a powerful force on German life in years of political and intellectual depression.

The novelty of his treatment, as he says, consists in the fact that, unlike any previous moralist, he approached the subject " exclusively from the side of natural history."