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Duty Quotes

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Duty Quotes

“The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.”

Ifs Feelings Enjoy Stupid Duty Critics Satisfaction Accomplished Superiority Stupid Things

Author:Paul Gauguin

“The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)

“So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty.”

Source: The speeches of the right honourable Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons

“If there is to be no satisfaction in pleasure, none in wisdom, none in ambition, none in the golden mean, what then? Ah, where then? In duty. In doing right because it is right.”

Ifs Mean Pleasure Duty Ambition Satisfaction Golden Doing Right Golden Mean

Book:Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott

Source: Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott

“The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.”

Ideas Self Animal Moral Duty Mere Satisfaction Recognition Animal Life Moral Life

Book:Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)

“When the life of the nation was attempted, when the cause of liberty and human rights called for their aid, they rushed forth to rally under the banner they loved, with grand singleness of purpose and heroic devotion--leaving all behind them, to meet toil and danger, hunger, sickness, wounds, and death, for nothing but the sublime satisfaction of doing their duty to their country and to mankind.”

“Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.”

Men Wells Ends Understanding Taken Failing He Man Duty Solitude Satisfaction Flying Manners

Author:Edmund Burke

“One might feel indignant at the injustice which deals out what is called fame with so unequal a hand, were it not for the reflection that men who are competent to add to the intellectual wealth of the world, and enlarge the domain of knowledge, have learned to take popular applause at its true value, and to find in the faithful discharge of honorable duty a satisfaction which is its own reward.”

Source: Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-general U. S. Army

“I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.”

Feels Wells Sometimes Seems Faces Work Doubt Duty Conscience Profound Satisfaction Following Superiors Emptiness Midst Spontaneous Obeying Ennui Sneer Fatality

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy.”

“Let the awe [the teacher] has upon [children's] minds be so tempered with the constant marks of tenderness and good will, that affection may spur them to their duty, and make them find a pleasure in complying with his dictates. This will bring them with satisfaction to their tutor; make them hearken to him, as to one who is their friend, that cherishes them, and takes pains for their good; this will keep their thoughts easy and free, whilst they are with him, the only temper wherein the mind is capable of receiving new information, and of admitting into itself those impressions.”

Source: Locke, Berkely & Hume