It is with flowers, as with moral qualities: the bright-coloured are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet-smelling. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. – Michel de Montaigne, translated

Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Why should moral distinction be made between death by the spirochete and death by the streptococcus? – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) [Spirochete because of its association with