Quotes About Loyalty

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving as if they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.

When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience.

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all. How dare you intervene? As well ask, How dare you not?

To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off

Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are god's apology for relations. (p. 129)

On page 607, alluding to the end of my first marriage (and carefully remembering to state that that's none of his business), he very sweetly says that I 'might leave a wife, but not a friend.' Nice try. Neat smear. But he shouldn't be so sure....

Question: "What do you most value in your friends? Answer: Their continued existence.

I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends.

On page 605, Blumenthal says that 'I made friends with Hitchens's friends the novelists Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.' True in its way. I particularly remember the occasion when he called me up and invited me to dinner with Dick Morris, but only on condition that I brought Rushdie (who was staying in my house) along with me. No Rushdie: no invitation. So I never did get to meet Dick Morris.

Those who try to condemn or embarrass you by the company you keep will usually be found to be in very poor company themselves; in any case they are, as I was once taught to say, tackling the man and not the ball.

Thus did I begin to see, or thought I began to see, how the British Conservatives kept the fierce, irrational loyalty of those whom they exploited.

He Showed Up. Throughout his life and times, whenever and wherever something important was on the line, he presented himself.

Only the liberals and soft-leftists persist in agonizing as they give their (actually unqualified) loyalty, in advance, to people who publicly spit on them. I don't know whether the masochist or the sadist commits the greater evil, but I do know that you can't have one without the other.

Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." I

The capacity for loyalty is stretched too thin when it tries to attach itself to the hypothetical solidarity of the human race.

The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept; And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

FAUSTUS. [Stabbing his arm.] Lo, Mephistophilis, for love of thee, I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood Assure my soul to be great Lucifer's, Chief lord and regent of perpetual night!

Gaveston: I can no longer keepe me from my lord. Edward: What Gaveston, welcome: kis not my hand, Embrace me Gaveston as I do thee: Why shouldst thou kneele, knowest thou not who I am? Thy friend, thy selfe, another Gaveston. Not Hilas was more mourned of Hercules, Then thou hast beene of me since thy exile.

Edward: Well Mortimer, ile make thee rue these words, Beseemes it thee to contradict thy king? Frownst thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster, The sworde shall plane the furrowes of thy browes, And hew these knees that now are growne so stiffe. I will have Gaveston, and you shall know, What danger tis to stand against your king. Gaveston: Well doone, Ned.

TAMBURLAINE: Live still, my love, and so conserve my life, Or, dying, be the author of my death.

Why should you love him whom the world hates so? Because he loves me more than all the world

You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problem, but they were, after all, your friend's problems...

Next out of the hall came the sisters and their husbands. Before I could say anything, the captain had clamped his hand over my mouth and was lifting me off my feet as I kicked. Cornwall made as to draw his dagger, but Regan pulled him away. You've just won a kingdom, my duke, killing vermin is a servant's task. Leave the bitter fool stew in his own bile. She wanted me. It was clear.