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duty quotes

  • The scouts'motto is founded on my initials, it is:, which means, you are always to be in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your.

    - Robert Stephenson Smyth, 1st Baron Baden-Powell
    BE PREPARED DUTY1908  Scouting for Boys.

  • The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.

    - Norman Bethune
      Letter from Madrid, 5 May. Quoted in Ted  Allen and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The Sword (1952).

  • Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes12:13.

  • To learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Catechism.

  • Most true it is, as a wise man teaches us, that 'doubt of anysort cannot be removed except by Action.'Onwhich ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or in uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: 'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee', which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

    -Thomas Carlyle
    ^4  Sartor Resartus, bk.2, ch.9.

  • I ain't complainingit's a duty laid down upon us by Godbut the Pax Britannia takes a bit of keeping upwith 'arf the world full of savages and 'arf the other 'arf just getting in the way.

    - (Arthur) Joyce Lunel Cary
      Mister Johnston.

  • Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

    -of Salisbury
      Speech, Caernarvon,10  Apr.

  • The duty of an Opposition is to oppose.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
    Remark attributed by his son, Winston Churchill. The phrase English statesman, Prime Minister (1940^5,1951^2) and writer. Hebecame a Conservative MPin1900 but turnedLiberalin1904 and was made First Lord of theAdmiralty (1911) and Chancellor of  the  Exchequer  (1924^9).  He  returned  to  the  Conservative Party  in 1929  and  on  Chamberlain's  defeat  formed  a  coalition government to pursue the war  with Germany.

  • Idonot likebeingmoved:for thewill isexcited;andaction Is a most dangerous thing: I tremble for something factitious, Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process; We are so proneto thesethings with our terrible notions of duty.

    - Arthur Hugh Clough
      Amours de Voyage, canto 2, pt.11.

  • To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseit is so easy to have any of them in Indianever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforethat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

    - Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (of Kedleston)
      Farewell speech on departing from Bombay as Viceroy of India.

  • Puisque ceux qui avaient le devoir de manier l'e  pe  e de la France l'ont laisse  e tomber brise  e, moi, j'ai ramasse   le tron c° on du glaive. Since those whose duty it was to wield the sword of Francehave let it fall shattered totheground,Ihavetaken up the broken blade.

    - Charles de Gaulle
      Speech,13  Jul.

  • These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so faron in their journey of life, bya religious sense of duty and desire to do right.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^5  Of Mr and Mrs Boffin. Our Mutual Friend, bk.1, ch.9.

  •    To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr Bulstrode rarely shrank from.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
    ^2  Middlemarch, bk.2, ch.13.

  • We are making politics a spectator sport in which our only duty is to vote somebody into office and then retire to the grandstands.

    - David Richmond Gergen
      In US News &  World Report,10 May.

  • Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

    -W(illiam) E(wart) Gladstone
      Speech,10  Apr.

  •   Never let success hide its emptiness from you; achievement its nothingness; toil its desolation. Keep alivetheincentivetopushonfurther, that pain inthesoul that drives us beyond ourselves. Do not look back, and do not dream about the future either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward, your destiny are here and now.

    - Dag HjalmarAgne Carl Hammarskjo«  ld
    Va«  gmarken (translated by L Sjsy«  berg and W H  Auden as Markings,1964).

  • I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities.But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is to me inhuman and indecent and dishonorable.

    - Lillian Florence Hellman
      Letter to  John S  Wood,19 May, on being asked to give information for the McCarthy trials. Collected in US Congress Committee Hearing on Un- American  Activities (1952), pt.8.

  • It is our first duty to serve society, and, after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. Ayouthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, Feb. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • Awake my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run.

    -Thomas Ken
      Manual of Prayers for the use of the Scholars of  Winchester College.

  • The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself† In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
       At the dedication of  Amherst College Robert Frost Library, 25 Oct.

  • Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our dutyas we understand it.

    - Abraham Lincoln
      Speech, NewYork, 27 Feb.

  • We have been too comfortable and too indulgentmany, perhaps, too selfishand the stern hand of fatehasscoured ustoan elevationwhere we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks we had forgotten, of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as men and women of thisgeneration last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech, London,19 Sep.

  • I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier whotried to dohis dutyas Godgavehimthelight to see that duty.

    - Douglas MacArthur
      Address to Congress after being relieved of his duty by President Truman,19  Apr.

  • I have not time to say any more, but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen, and let her know her army has had a glorious victory. MonsieurTallard and two other generals are in my coach, and I am following the rest.

    -John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
      Note written on a tavern bill to his wife, Sarah,13  Aug, after the Battle of Blenheim.

  • If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and damn the consequences. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

    - Alfred, 1st Viscount Milner Milner
      On the blocking by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords of the Liberal Government's budget. Speech at Glasgow, Nov.

  • I wish to say Nelson confides that every man will do his duty.

    - Horatio,Viscount Nelson Nelson
      Instructions to the flag officer on HMS  Victory, 21 Oct. The signal was amended to begin,'England expects†'.

  • Thank God, I have done my duty.

    - Horatio,Viscount Nelson Nelson
      Last words at the Battle of  Trafalgar, quoted in Robert Southey Life of Nelson (1813), ch.9.

  • It is the professional duty of the advertising agent to conceal his artifice.When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks', but when Demosthenes spoke, they said 'Let us march against Philip.'

    - David Ogilvy
      Confessions of an  Advertising Man, ch.5.

  • As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

    -Thomas Paine
      Common Sense, ch.4.

  • We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.Our interests are eternal, and it is our duty to follow them.

    - HenryJohnTemple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
      Speech, House of Commons,1 Mar.

  • Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.

    -Thomas Love Peacock
      NightmareAbbey, ch.11.

  • I am sure that the immediate abolition of the slave trade is the first, the principal, the most indispensable act of policy, of dutyand of justice the legislature of this country has to take, if it is indeed their wish to secure those important objects† For we continue to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves, we continue it even yet, in spite of all our great and undeniable pretensions as civilisation.

    -William known as  theYounger Pitt
      Speech to the House of Commons, 2 Apr.The House did not abolish slavery until1806.

  • When people are too comfortable, it is not possible to restrain them within the bounds of their duty† They may be compared to mules who, being accustomed to burdens, are spoilt by rest rather than labour.

    -Cardinal Richelieu
      Testament Politique.

  • The rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind, and†only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

    -John D(avison),Jr Rockefeller
    Credo engraved in Rockefeller Center Plaza, NewYork.

  • The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion.

    -John Ruskin
      Time andTide, letter13.

  • Whena stupid manisdoing something heisashamedof, he always declares that it is his duty.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Apollodorus. Caesar and Cleopatra, act 3.

  • The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty†our first dutya duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificedis not to be poor.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Major Barbara, preface.

  • There have been many crimes committed in the name of duty and obediencemany more than in the name of dissent.

    - C(harles) P(ercy), 1st Baron Snow
      'Testimony of Four Peers', in Esquire, Dec.

  • As fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her face was lovely, but her body was as round as a ball.

    -John Hanning Speke
      In Karagwe, west of LakeVictoria, among the Galla people. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile.

  • The preservation of health is a duty.Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

    - Herbert Spencer
    Education, ch.4.

  • 'Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice', should be a woman's motto henceforward.

    - Elizabeth ne  e  Cady Stanton
      TheWoman's Bible, pt.2,'Comments on Mark'.

  • The duty of a journalist is the duty of a watchman.

    -WilliamThomas Stead
      'Government byJournalism', in the Contemporary Review, May. Collected in A Journalist onJournalism (1892).

  • I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

    - Laurence Sterne
    ^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.1.

  • There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Virginibus Puerisque,'An Apology for Idlers'.

  • It was my duty to have loved the highest; It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'Guinevere', l.652^6.

  • And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 'I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my dutyas a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!' And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

    -Tennyson
      'The Revenge', stanza13, l.99^104.

  • The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and bydisclosing them, to makethemthe common property of the nation.

    -TheTimes
      Leading article, 6 Feb.

  • The primary duty of a serious biographer is to illuminate hissubject'slife work, nottoplay thespy inhisbedroom.

    - (Theodore) Philip Toynbee
      Book review in the Observer,18 Mar.

  • The duty of a democracy is to know then what it knows now.

    - E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
      One Man's Meat,'One Man's Meat'.

  •    If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch.4.

  • The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    Intentions,'The Critic as Artist'.

  • Henry James wrote fiction as if it were a painful duty.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
    Attributed.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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