Quotes About Responsibility

It is for men to make wage war and make peace; for that task is theirs.

She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control.

W]e cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky.

When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better--her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties

Punctuality is one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life.

the whole of life, its masters, its adventurers, then appeared in long ranks of magnificent human beings behind me; and I was the inheritor; I, the continuer; I, the person miraculously appointed to carry it on.

Then there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely;

Later she wasn't so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

Clarissa said she would buy the flowers herself.

The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco, a soldier heading a revolution, a pariah howling with skepticism and solitude.

oh, they had to go before the end they had to be back at ten

We have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal in the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print.

After all, we are not responsible. We are not judges. We are not called upon to torture our fellows with thumb-screws and irons; we are not called upon to mount pulpits and lecture them on pale Sunday afternoons. It is better to look at a rose, or to read Shakespeare as I read him here in Shaftesbury Avenue.

No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out - a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress - children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed.

I'm convinced people are wrong when they say it's work that wears one; it's responsibility.

You can't drive a bayonet through a chap's body in cold blood, he remembered him saying. And you can't go in for an exam. without drinking, said Edward.

Then (she had felt it only this morning) there was the terror; the overwhelming incapacity, one's parents giving it into one's hands, this life, to be lived to the end, to be walked with serenely; there was in the depths of her heart an awful fear.

We have been taking into our mouths the bodies of dead birds.

In the same way once a book is printed and published it ceases to be the property of the author; he commits it to the care of other people;

I should implore you to remember your responsibilities, to be higher, more spiritual; I should remind you how much depends on you, and what an influence you can exert upon the future.

The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?