noble quotes

A! fredome is a noble thing! Fredome mayss man to haiff liking, Fredome all solace to man giffis: He levys at ess that frely levys!

-John Barbour
c.1375  The Brus, bk.1, l.225^8.

   Here all were noble, save Nobility.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto1, stanza 85.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movementbut it passes away from them.They are not the leaders of a revolution. Theyare its victims.

- Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra Connor
Under Western Eyes, pt.2, ch.3.

Noble men in the quiet of morning hear Indians singing the continent's violent requiem.

-William Dunbar
  The Opening of the Field,'A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar'.

I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to seethat the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

-JuliusJ Epstein
  Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca (with Philip G Epstein and Howard Koch).

Only power can get people into a position where they may be noble.

- Alfred Kazin
Quoted in M Korda Power in the Office (1976).

Why can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat. Why can't a woman be like that?

- AlanJay Lerner
  'A Hymn to Him', from My Fair Lady (music by Frederick Loewe).

   What is poetry?† The suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.

-John Ruskin
  Modern Painters, vol.3, pt.4, ch.1.

But ruffian stern, and soldier good, The noble and the slave, From various cause the same wild road, On the same bloody morning, trode, To that dark innthe Grave!

- Sir Walter Scott
  The Lord of the Isles, canto 6, stanza 26.

Ye say, theyall have passed away, That noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That 'mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout; But their name is on your waters, Ye may not wash it out.

- Lydia Howard ne  e Huntley Sigourney
  Select Poems,'Indian Names'.

I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.

-Wallace Stevens
  Harmonium,'ThirteenWays of Looking At A Blackbird', pt.8.

For words divide and rend; But silence is most noble till the end.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'Who hath given man speech'.

We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, Thou art noble and nude and antique.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Poems and Ballads,'Dolores', stanza 7.

From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Lady ClaraVere deVere', stanza 7, l.50^6.

Never yet Was noble man but made ignoble talk. He makes no friend who never made a foe.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'Lancelot and Elaine', l.1081^2.