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.
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.
Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
America is made of different races and different religions, but we're all co-travelers on the spaceship Earth and must respect and help each other along the way.
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
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