"Moralise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too young at the time of my first voyage to moralise in this philosophic manner; but for all that I had imbibed a thorough disgust for the slave-trade, as, indeed, most of my countrymen had done. The period of which I am speaking was that when, by the laudable efforts ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... the Church, and enter an oblong court bounded by the west wing of the Bishop's Palace, now a stately wreck, with horses stabled in the Hall where one time Bishops and Princes sat at meat. You feel inclined to linger here, and moralise upon the theme. But you perceive your noble host awaiting you on the broad steps of the magnificent Jacobean mansion, a picture worthy to be set in such a framework. It is like a portrait of one of the earlier CECILS stepped out of the frame in the Long Gallery. The stately figure is attired ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... the velvet green-sward to his tread: [6] Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye? Upward he looks—"and calls it luxury:" [E] Kind Nature's charities his steps attend; 25 In every babbling brook he finds a friend; While [7] chastening thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed By wisdom, moralise his pensive road. Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower, To his spare meal he calls the passing poor; 30 He views the sun uplift his golden fire, Or sink, with heart alive like Memnon's lyre; [F] Blesses the moon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... stage, and was beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes 'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong, that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking that ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... old Castle of Rothes clings a legend of a more pathetic kind. "Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralise my song," says Spenser, and it is with these well-worn but ever-fresh subjects that the story deals. The heiress of one of the old lairds of Rothes, being allowed to roam at will with her foster-mother, cast an eye of love on the son of the laird of Arndilly. As in ballad ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... window, the chief called me, and I answered, hoping that I might now moralise with him in my own way. I was deceived; vulgar minds dislike serious reasoning; if some noble truth start up, they applaud for a moment, but the next withdraw their notice, or scruple not to attempt to shine ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I'm glad ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... posting-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... brigades of pink-legged women with a fixed smile on their faces. It takes the rank of high expressive art. And the motive of this Ballo was consistently worked out in an intelligible sequence of well-ordered scenes. To moralise upon its meaning would be out of place. It had a conflict of passions, a rhythmical progression of emotions, a tragic climax in the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... burnt at Westminster and two at the Exchange. Pepys, beholding the latter sight from a balcony, was led to moralise on the mutability of human opinion. The strange thing is that, when these Acts were burnt, the Act for the abolition of the House of Lords (1649) appears to have escaped condemnation. For its intrinsic interest, I here insert the words ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... sensitive) that your admirers have to contend against. A French critic, M. Taine, also protests that you do preach too much. Did any author but yourself so frequently break the thread (seldom a strong thread) of his plot to converse with his reader and moralise his tale, we also might be offended. But who that loves Montaigne and Pascal, who that likes the wise trifling of the one and can bear with the melancholy of the other, but prefers your ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... vigorous in its condemnation. The history of the belief in witch burning, heresy hunting, eternal damnation, etc., all illustrate the same point—religious teachings are all modified and moralised in accordance with the changing moral conceptions of mankind. It is not the gods who moralise man, it is ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... this within doors. Outside, the trees, the flowers are my calendar; the birds chime the hours; periodically the church-bell calls the travellers home. Between all these friendly monitors it is hard if one cannot keep the mean. If the passing-bell tempts me to moralise overmuch I may turn to the creatures, and learn to live for the moment. I should be slow to confess how much worldly wisdom I have won from what we choose to call the lower orders of creation, because nobody willingly betrays the whereabouts of his buried treasure, or the amount ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... intention to moralise or to indulge in a homily against the reading of what is deliberately evil. There is not so much need for this now, and I am not discoursing on the whole duty of man. I take that part of our reading which by itself is no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently instructive. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... day Lionel is married; and then, dear old friend, calm days, clear consciences:—In climes where whole races have passed away—proud cities themselves sunk in graves—where our petty grief for a squirearch's lost house we shall both grow ashamed to indulge—there we will moralise, rail against vain dreams and idle pride, cultivate vines and orange trees, with Horace—nay, nay, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rover. Instead of giving in and making the best of circumstances, that freebooter, with characteristic impetuosity, shut the steel box with a loud snap, put it under his arm, rose, and walked out of the place without uttering a word. He went down to the beach and rowed away, leaving Moses to moralise on the ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... misnomer. You don't tell the 'phone anything when you talk into it. You tell the person at the other end of the line, and so, I changed its name to the Municipaphone, which shows that it's a 'phone that belongs to the City. Just to sort of moralise the thing I had the mouth-piece changed to look like a hat instead of a funnel, because funnels are apt to suggest alcoholic beverages and sometimes people who aren't at all thirsty are made so by the mere power of suggestion. The hat, however, has always ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... "Pshaw! man, don't moralise. This girl is my heart's choice. Please Heaven I may return to console her for present sorrow. But I can't wait. Help me: I can trust you. See Mariquita safely back to her home, and then join us ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot," etc.—with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise upon at leisure, "under the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the pain with which I viewed the change that had of late come over my master; converting him from the gayest and most DEBONAIRE of men into this morose and solitary dreamer. Here, had I felt any temptation to moralise on the tyranny of passion, was the occasion; but, as the farther I left the closet behind me the more instant became the crisis, the present soon reasserted its power. Reflecting that Henry, in this state of uncertainty, was capable of the wildest acts, and that not less was to be feared from ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... a light and amusing recital of his various and singular life for the last three years. Anecdote, jest, maxim, remark, interspersed, gave a zest and piquancy to the narration. An accomplished roue always affects to moralise; it is a part of his character. There is a vague and shrewd sentiment that pervades his morale and his system. Frequent excitement, and its attendant relaxation; the conviction of the folly of all pursuits; the ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were reserved, intellectual—you viewed things in a queer light of your own. I felt that the touch of a chain would fret you. I gave you absolute freedom—often when I craved for you. I made no demands. I assented to your philosophic analysis of the situation—it is your way to moralise whimsically on everything, as if you were a disconnected intelligence outside the universe—and I paid no attention to it. I used to laugh at you—oh, not unkindly, but lovingly, happily, victoriously. Oh, yes, I was a fool—what woman in love isn't? I thought ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke |
