Quotes About Duty

To generous souls every task is noble.

But do thou remain, there is no use for punctilio, if we can [but save your life.]

The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.

A true warrior can only serve others, not himself...When you become a mercenary, you're just a bully with a gun.

There could be no eldest son for her, and younger sons were indelicate things, necessary, but not to be much spoken of. Younger sons had none of the privileges of obscurity; it was their plain duty to remain hidden until some disaster perchance promoted them to their brother's places, and, since this was their function, it was desirable that they should keep themselves wholly suitable for succession.

We could watch the madmen, on clement days, sauntering and skipping among the trim gravel walks and pleasantly planted lawns; happy collaborationists who had given up the unequal struggle, all doubts resolved, all duty done, the undisputed heirs-at-law of a century of progress, enjoying the heritage at their ease.

In that dark hour I was aghast to realise that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died. I suddenly knew I had no desire or tenderness or esteem. Nothing remained except the chill bonds of law and duty an custom.

Many were already on Lord Copper's pay-roll and they thus found their working day prolonged by some three hours without recompense—with the forfeit, indeed, of the considerable expenses of dressing up, coming out at night, and missing the last train home; those who were normally the slaves of other masters were, Lord Copper felt, his for the evening.

There should be a drug for soldiers, Guy thought, to put them to sleep until they were needed. They should repose among the briar like the knights of the Sleeping Beauty; they should be laid away in their boxes in the nursery cupboard. This unvarying cycle of excitement and disappointment rubbed them bare of paint and exposed the lead beneath.

So the men did, and they died.

newly formed group of women fliers known as the WASPs. Female pilots were desperately needed to ferry planes and supplies around the United States and free up the men for combat duty.

Legitimacy is the elixir of political power. The strongest is never strong enough to be the master, Jean-Jaques Rousseau observed, unless he translates strength into right and obedience into duty. Only democracy has that authority in the world today.

warriors and statesmen who survived believed that they had a duty to create a world that did not lapse back into nihilistic competition.

How is it done? By not doing. By dreaming insistently. By performing our daily duties but living, simultaneously, in the imagination. Travelling far and wide, in the geography of our minds. Conquering like Caesar, amid the blaring trumpets of our reverie. Experiencing intense sexual pleasure, in the privacy of our fantasy. Feeling everything in every way, not in the flesh, which always tires, but in the imagination.

Organizar em perfeito paralelismo a minha vida prática e a minha vida especulativa, de modo a que a primeira nunca possa prejudicar a segunda, à qual está, por um dever mais alto, subordinada.

Nothing irks me more than the vocabulary of social responsibility. The very word 'duty' is unpleasant to me, like an unwanted guest. But the terms 'civic duty', 'solidarity', 'humanitarianism' and others of the same ilk disgust me like rubbish dumped out of a window right on top of me. I'm offended by the implicit assumption that these expressions pertain to me, that I should find them worthwhile and even meaningful.

Ai que prazer Nao cumprir um dever, Ter um livro para ler E não o fazer!

I'm not attached to anything. I'm attached to what it feels it's my duty, to do my duty. I think that I will die with the boots on.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true." May 19, 1962

I am the menial, at the beck and squawk of any feathered worthy who wants service.

She was seeing that her father spent his last years with his own family and not in a decayed boarding house full of old women whose heads jiggled. She was doing her duty. She had brothers and sisters who were not.

It's no part of your job to think for the Lord, his great-uncle said. Judgment may rack your bones.

Ah! sempre la stessa musica![...] Sempre i doveri: ecco una parola che mi toglie il fiato. Un mucchio di vecchi stupidi in panciotto di flanella e di bigotte con lo scaldino e il rosario che continuano a cantarci negli orecchi: Il dovere! Il dovere! Eh, maledizione, il dovere è sentire quello che è veramente grande, il dovere è amare quello che è veramente bello, il dovere è non accettare tutte le convenienze sociali, con il cumulo di ignominie che ci impongono.

The role of a do-gooder is not what actors call a fat part.