What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Interpretation
Moral actions elicit positive feelings, while immoral actions lead to regret and discomfort.
This quote by Ernest Hemingway suggests that the essence of morality is tied to our emotional responses. Actions that align with our moral values result in feelings of satisfaction and happiness, while those that contradict them bring about feelings of guilt and shame. Thus, our emotional reactions can serve as a guiding compass for determining right and wrong.
In practice
During a discussion on ethical dilemmas, you might reference this quote to highlight the emotional aspects of decision-making.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.
Consider your possessions loaned to you by God.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
There will be justice," said Brutha. "If there is no justice, there is nothing.
One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.
All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
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