Quotes About Responsibility

Ach mein Freund, heiraten Sie nicht, haben Sie keine Kinder. Man gibt ihnen das Leben und sie geben einem den Tod.

Conscience, my dear fellow, is a stick which every one takes up to beat his neighbor and not for application to his own back.

I, and I only, am to blame for all their sins; I spoiled them. To-day they are as eager for pleasure as they used to be for sugar-plums. When they were little girls I indulged them in every whim. They had a carriage of their own when they were fifteen. They have never been crossed. I am guilty, and not they—but I sinned through love.

The head has its designated place in all creations. If by chance a nation allows its head to fall at its feet, sooner or later it is sure to discover that it has committed suicide.

Journalism may say or suppose anything, and our dignity forbids us even to reply.

The elder boy's plain white collar, turned down over a closely fitting jacket, made a contrast with his brother's clothing, but the color and material were the same; the two brothers were otherwise dressed alike, and looked alike. No one could see them without feeling touched by the way in which Louis took care of Marie. There was an almost fatherly look in the older boy's eyes; and Marie, child though he was, seemed to be full of gratitude to Louis.

To have children, to have a wife, to adore them — what is it but to have many hearts and bare them to a dagger?" he cried, springing up with the bound of a tiger and walking up and down the room. "To be a father is to give one's self over, bound hand and foot to sorrow.

There comes an age when the only mistress a man can serve is his country.

Setting aside all the religious question,' my uncle said, 'I would remark to your Excellency that Nature only owes us life, and that it is society that owes us happiness

Dinner time arrives, and as a rule I have done nothing. Now comes the problem which faces me twice every day — how to suffice in my own person for two children, put on their bibs, turn up their sleeves, and get them to eat. In the midst of these ever-recurring cares, joys, and catastrophes, the only person neglected in the house is myself

To watch the governing power is a useful career, and, I may add, a very busy one.

There isn't a true innocence for children whose parents are shackled.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

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

But the fact is that she went away and left us all to cope with the wreckage she left behind.

I needed someone to tell me it was all right to feel the anger and despair, but I received only kudos for my synthetically mature, responsible behavior.

The mother who abandoned her child or took her own life leaves a daughter with the most direct access route to anger--she left me--but even the mother who falls ill and dies can be an object of blame.

While the daughter of a helpless father develops a hypercompetent physical self-reliance that encourages her to take responsibility for those around her, the daughter of a distant father becomes more emotionally independent. As an adult, she's wary of depending on others; feeling physically abandoned by one parent and emotionally abandoned by the other, she selects only a handful of people to whom she'll get close.

Such, then, were the men in whose hands lay the welfare of the country. And, it must be confessed, they knew but little and cared still less about the common people for whom they legislated.

When, on his return to Lud-in-the-Mist, he had been twitted for having wasted so much time on such an unworthy object, he had answered that a pig was thrall to the same master as a Mayor, and that it needed as much skill to cure the one as the other; adding that a good fiddler enjoys fiddling for its own sake, and that it is all the same to him whether he plays at a yokel's wedding or a merchant's funeral.

A relationship that has become artificial, and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor's house is ablaze

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.