Quotes about Principle

Do not suffer your good nature ... to say yes when you ought to say no; remember that it is a public not a private cause that is to be injured or benefitted by your choice

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian

Nothing reflects so much honor on a workman as a trial of his work and its endurance of it. So it is with God. It honors Him when His saints preserve their integrity.

While the soul is in mortal sin, nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

The first principle of spiritual formation is this: A spiritually formed person loves God and others.

There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering.

Is is always time to do the right thing.

It is never wrong to do the right thing.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.