What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore ...it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free--or moral--personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one's fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to b...ury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a subject is highly controversial ... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opin...ion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one's clothes? Or can one walk on hot coals without scorching the feet? So is he ...who sleeps with his neighbor's wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock,... and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »