Quotes About Nobility

What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

It was a pleasure to deal with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything mean and base, and who possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone.

is truly great who deemeth himself small, and counteth all height of honour as nothing.

The mind stands upright when it is humbly submitted to God. For each thing exists to a higher and more noble state to the extent it stands firm in what perfects it more.

At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health.

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble…. A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

The nobility of the ancients was no more than purity and serenity--what need for bushels of emblems?

I'm not an aristocrat. I have no idea what that is.

Todos los Estados bien gobernados y todos los príncipes inteligentes han tenido cuidado de no reducir a la nobleza a la desesperación, ni al pueblo al descontento.

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?

Free your self from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But isn't that, too, a form of slavery?

Just because a man had a trace of blue blood in his veins didn't mean he was quality. It didn't make him a gentleman, either. All it made him was an aristocrat.

Speaking Latin properly is indeed to be held in the highest regard – not just because of its own merits, but in fact because it has been neglected by the masses. For it is not so much Noble to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.

And then she was looking up into the deep-set, dark eyes of the Marquess of Rockley.

It will enrich your spirit as nothing else can. it will give you that rare sense of nobility that can only spring from love and selflessly helping your fellow man. Make a career of humanity. Make it a central part of your life.

The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading so that he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.

the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.

What is nobler, she mused, turning over the photographs, than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty?

Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, I thought, taking down her poems. She was born in the year 1661; she was noble both by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women:

But, if we now turn to human society, what chaos and confusion meet the eye! No Club has any such jurisdiction upon the breed of man. The Heralds College is the nearest approach we have to the Spaniel Club. It at least makes some attempt to preserve the purity of the human family. But when we ask what constitutes noble birth—should our eyes be light or dark, our ears curled or straight, are topknots fatal, our judges merely refer us to our coats of arms.

Il suo gusto per i libri era stato precoce. Da bambino, a volte un paggio lo trovava, a mezzanotte, ancora intento a leggere. [...] Per dirla in breve, Orlando era un nobile malato d'amore per la letteratura.

Q: What is the best thing men do? A: To be kind, to be proud, to be fearless.