Word: moralizing
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...last trump, and sits in judgment upon the Harvard student. We had expected light weight, but were surprised at total depravity. The Harvard student is reduced to a pygmy in the presence of the heroic figure that impersonates with that author the sublimed and etherealized student. Mental indifference and moral baseness furnish the lighter portions of the picture, for which fine clothes and cigarettes afford a sombre background. We recognize the tenderness with which he has touched off our little weaknesses as flowing from that culture which is most "sympathetic with every mood, passion, and failing in all ages...
...outrun observation of facts. I object to the otherwise good figure in regard to Society's veiling its head in the presence of immorality, on the ground that the mask is for the erring. That one should pretend to discover among us openness of vice, that last step in moral degradation, is surprising, when it is patent to one who observes at all that loss of caste is its result, while the portion of the habitue is contempt. At worst, we are whited sepulchres...
...that had been the subject of this discussion is hardly ambitious enough to merit the name of reasoning. A fondness for the universal affirmative or negative is not to be cultivated in writings of a controversial nature. Having published with boldness "that culture is only the perfect blossom of moral character," singularly enough a few lines later he tells us "that it is, in short, only the result of long study, rich experience," and moral character. By which happy compromise we are left in doubt as to how far he asserts that culture comes from morality which language, used...
...code of morality, it will be seen, can only influence mental processes indirectly, that is, by determining the mind to such or such researches; but investigation once set afoot, the laws of thought, of evidence, and of logic, and not rules of action, conduct us to truth or falsehood, and thus when rules of morality, as well as all else, are subjected to the scrutiny of reason, they cease even indirectly to influence mental growth and become themselves the product of thought. Thus do we find, superstitions apart, that moral character is the perfect blossom of culture, which differs...
...often used for laziness in very much the same way as, in the circles of outer darkness, "financial irregularity" is used for fraud. This indifference - to keep the more general term - is usually supposed to result from a precocious and unerring insight into the realities of things, and a moral and intellectual nature of too high a "tone" to take any interest in the vulgar and short-sighted struggles of the external world. The Harvard student is popularly supposed to be a handsome, well-dressed, and particularly self-indulgent Fakir. Like Lady Teazle, I admit all the rest...