9 quotes
I love justice, not for its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for the moral truth and loveliness thereof.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
Justice is moral temperance in the world of men. It keeps just relations between men; one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
I am to do justice, and demand that of all, — a universal human debt, a universal human claim.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
The facts of man's history do not fully represent the faculties of his nature as the history of matter represents the qualities of matter.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as the natural object of his conscience. As the mind loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the right; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
Observation and reflection only give us the actual of morals; conscience, by gradual and successive intuition, presents us the ideal of morals.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
The people are not satisfied with any form of government, or statute law, until it comes up to their sense of justice; so every progressive State revises its statutes from time to time, and at each revision comes nearer to the absolute right which human nature demands.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
Ten Sermons of Religion (1853)