Moralists

(200 votes)   I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

Oscar Wilde
1856-1900, British Author, Wit

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(157 votes)   Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

William Shakespeare
1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor

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(155 votes)   Ah! How neatly tied, in these people, is the umbilical cord of morality! Since they left their mothers they have never sinned, have they? They are apostles, they are the descendants of priests; one can only wonder from what source they draw their indignation, and above all how much they have pocketed to do this, and in any case what it has done for them.

Antonin Artaud
1896-1948, French Theater Producer, Actor, Theorist

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(133 votes)   The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

Walter Lippmann
1889-1974, American Journalist

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(131 votes)   Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

Samuel Butler
1612-1680, British Poet, Satirist

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(117 votes)   A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.

Oscar Wilde
1856-1900, British Author, Wit

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(92 votes)   What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.

Malcolm Lowry

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