Wrong

“ The scaffold on which Truth is murdered, the throne on which wrong sits to rule, are built of careless, irreverent, senseless criticisms. When the account of the good and ill which we have done on earth is summed up, the heaviest item in the account against many of us will perhaps consist in the record of our idle words. ”

“ Difference of manner may go for a great deal, but beyond and below the resentment caused by a prompt, decisive, and perhaps imperious tone, lies a deeply-rooted sense of wrong—logically or illogically arrived at. ”

“ And suppose you later find it to be wrong? Well then, acknowledge that it is wrong. Acknowledge that you have done something human; that you have done something which every man before you has done; that you have made a mistake. ”

“ Right means any whim that they happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion. Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments to pieces—they hold their tongues and look at you as if you were a dead dog. ”

“ WE read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. ”

“ But in matters of right and wrong, whatever be the lures, the taunts, or the usages of the world, or whatever the supposed inconveniences of singularity, let judgment and conscience always rule with absolute sway. ”

“ We are all human, and all do wrong.” ”

“ I conclude, then, that the theory that our judgments of right and wrong are merely judgments about somebody’s feelings is quite untenable in any of the forms in which it will lead to the conclusion that one and the same action is often both right and wrong. ”

“ What gives poignancy to these ideas is the real sense of wrong-doing, which projects a monstrous and exaggerated shadow.
The sense of duty, constantly worked, breeds in sensitive souls the despair of an unattainable perfection. ”

“ The sense of wrong, of hardship, of bitterness, of personal injustice, seems by degrees to melt away from it, and therefore it can be better faced. At least it is well that we should tell ourselves so. ”

“ Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do wrong, or that in one way we ought and in another way we ought not to do wrong, or is doing wrong always evil and dishonourable, as I was just now saying, and as has been already acknowledged by us? ”

“ I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly justifies such course deceives himself. But this I can say: to call any act evil, instantly begs the question. Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday! ”

“ That element is the eternal distinction, speaking broadly, between good and evil—between right and wrong—between the secret consciousness of having done right, and the consciousness of mere strength and force in certain other ways. ”

“ Every wrong act we perform inflicts an injury upon our moral consciousness, and a wound upon our sense of right, and inflicts a lasting injury upon our moral dignity, if it does not create a painful sense of wrong. ”

“ Nor wrong in doubt, nor merit in belief:
There is no God, nor Lord of quick and dead;
There is nowhere else," they said.
And, indeed, if any to whom life's path were rough
Should say as you, he had cause maybe at sight.
For lo, the way is steep and hard enough,
And wrong is tangled and confused with right ”

“ Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate. ”

“ “But we shall both be amply repaid for their discussion, if this truth remain with you—that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offence, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; ”

“ When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. ”

“ Now when such a state of things exists, that the sacred opinions one advances in argument are apologized for by his friends, before his face, lest his hearers receive a wrong impression of the man,—when such gross injustice is of frequent occurrence, where shall we look, and not look in vain, for men, deeds, thoughts? ”

“ When any wrong statement is made, whether in public or in society, or in books, and well received—or, at any rate, not refuted—that that is no reason why you should despair or think there the matter will rest. ”

“ Now I ask you to think, dear friends, of this, that that obstinate condition of dogged determination to do a wrong thing, knowing it to be a wrong thing, is a condition to which all evil steadily tends. ”

“ I show it most of all when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall;
And do him right that, answering one foul wrong.
Lives not to act another. ”

“ Not that their natural tendency is to turn us aside; but our corrupt reason getting the upper hand, and bearing the stroke in judgment, converts our minds and consciences to the making of wrong conclusions upon them. ”

“ What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. ”

“ Moreover, there is much on which men can be agreed, broken arcs visible to all, though the perfect round is seen by none. There are right and wrong, truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty, love and hate, purity and vice, honour and dishonour, and the difference between them is as apparent and real as the difference [109] ’twixt day and night, albeit, now and again, a twilight of uncertainty may render doubtful the confines of separation. ”

“ The great wrong, in a mistake or a sin like yours, is that it reaches out and injures those who are guiltless. Two people make laws unto themselves and say, 'It is no one's business—we wrong no one save ourselves.' Yet invariably others are eventually wronged. ”

“ His conduct still right, with his argument wrong; ”

“ To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right, is an expression I once used on a former occasion, and it is equally applicable now. We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. ”

“ You have admitted that those who go wrong in the choice of pleasures and pains — that is, in the choice of good and evil things — go wrong from want of knowledge, of the knowledge or science of mensuration. ”

“ Some positive persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong will needs be always so;
But you, with pleasure, own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last. ”

“ First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. ”

“ There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite. ”

“ However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them. ”

“ But the ancient moralists, in instituting this comparison, seem to have looked, not at society, but at the two individuals — the wrong doer and the wrong sufferer — and to have looked at them too from a point of view of their own. ”

“ "Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong." "You think so?" "I'm quite sure. If you don't it doesn't matter. Nothing will matter then." ”

“ Every line you lay down is either right or wrong: it may be timidly and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong; the aspect of the impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and is what they commonly call 'free' execution. ”

“ T. As he does those who do wrong—by his eternal law. But wrong is judged as an evil, and right as a good. Hence, the mind that does wrong, is judged as wrong; and the mind that does right, is judged as right. ”

“ Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct. ”

“ The theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong. ”

“ Somehow, too, that old simple question of right and wrong is apt to assume new aspects when looked upon from the bank of a certain dark river, into which one may have immediately to plunge. Right is unequivocal right, and wrong is unequivocal wrong, seen thus. ”

“ We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. ”

“ People believe half things in such a funny way, and mix up right and wrong—so that I am so often nearly thinking, is there a right and wrong—only I know there is—but I would like it decided once for all what is right and what is wrong. ”

“ if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better. ”

“ said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong." ”

“ The best in wrong setting becomes the worst.” Upon such bases these older accounts of evil undertook to make the presence of evil in the world consistent with the well known thesis, Omne Ens est bonum, — a thesis whose historical relation to our own conception of Being I am far from attempting to deny. ”

“ "That is the bitterest of all—to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing. ”