Quotes About Duty

For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one's life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.

To think that he can lie beside that furnace I stoked for him and do nothing but make water!

They would fight out of a sense of duty and without hatred. That is why France is strong and why she will rise again and resume her place in the world. France has been conquered but not defeated.

Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of passions contending; Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship wounded and bleeding, Passionate cries of desire, and importunate pleadings of duty!

The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty. Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale. Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal. Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness. Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation. Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway.

But Captain Vere was now again motionless, standing absorbed in thought. Again starting, he vehemently exclaimed, Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet that angel must hang!

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

When my dad needed a shirt ironed, he would yell downstairs to my mother, who would drop everything and iron his shirt.

I like to be able to raise people's consciousness, yes. And to remind that those of us involved in the receiving end of the oppression, we have a duty.

It's rare to find someone excited over jury duty. If they're out there, I've never met them. Not a one. When the summons for jury duty arrives in the mail, how many people scream, 'Yes!' and run to clear the calendar? None. Our first and only reaction is, 'Oh, no,' quickly followed by, 'How can I get out of this?'

I've been in a position before where a president has turned to me in the Oval Office in a difficult moment, without any pleasantries, and said, 'I'm asking you as your president and Commander in Chief to take command of the international security force in Afghanistan.' The only response can be, 'Yes, Mr. President.'

We are not sent into this world mainly to enjoy the loveliness therein, nor to sit us down in passive ease; no, we were sent here for action. The soul that seeks to do the will of God with a pure heart, fervently, does not yield to the lethargy of ease.

At the heart of every faith system is a bargain: on one side there is the comfort that comes from a narrative that suggests human life has cosmic significance, and on the other a duty to yield to moral commands that can, in the moment, seem rather inconvenient.

A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there, he is like butter on water and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity.

To mark the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I wanted to launch an FDNY shirt that pays tribute to the brave first responders who, like my father, risk their lives in the line of duty on a regular basis. All of the proceeds raised from the sale of the T-shirt benefit the New York Police & Fire Widows' & Children's Benefit Fund.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.

With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.

As young West Point cadets, our motto was 'duty, honor, country.' But it was in the field, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to the sands of the Middle East, that I learned that motto's fullest meaning. There I saw gallant young Americans of every race, creed and background fight, and sometimes die, for 'duty, honor, and their country.'

The soldiers at the DMZ are all very young, and I feel guilty about that.