Honorable Quotes
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The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
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More Honorable Quotes
I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
thomas jefferson— As quoted in The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions (1900) by Samuel E. Forman, p. 429.
It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.
petrarch— De vita solitaria (1346) as quoted in Madalyn Aslan's Jupiter Signs: How to Improve Your Luck, Career, Health, Finances, Appearance, and Relationships Through the New Astrology (2003) by Madalyn Aslan
Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.
george washington— Letter to Benedict Arnold (14 September 1775).
The ethical decision is always the fearsome decision. When something matters enough that we are afraid of the consequences afraid that even the honorable choice could result in harm or loss or sorrow that’s when ethics are involved.
— Henry W. Bloch, in The Importance of Ethics
Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive. And with it, everything honorable and glorious.
george washington— To the Marquis de Lafayette (15 November 1781).
The ancient and honorable.
— Isaiah, IX. 15. (Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations)
I will admit no bond that holds me to a party a day longer than I agree to its principles. When men meet together to confer, and ascertain whether or not they do agree, and find that they differ – radically, essentially, irreconcilably differ – what belongs to an honorable position except to part? They cannot consistently act together any longer.
jefferson davis— Reply in the Senate to a speech of Senator Douglas, May 1860
It is, then, the strife of all honorable men and women of the twentieth century to see that in the future competition of the races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not continue to put a premium on greed and imprudence and cruelty.
w. e. b. dubois— Ch. IX: Of the Sons of Master and Man
How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?
polybius— Histories, IX, 35:2 (Loeb)
Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him.
william morley punshon— p. 341. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan— Sheridaniana, Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas.
Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.
john buchan— Pilgrim’s Way (1940)
Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
henry clay— Reported in The Clay Code, or Text-Book of Eloquence, a Collection of Axioms, Apothegms, Sentiments … Gathered from the Public Speeches of Henry Clay, ed. G. Vandenhoff (1844), p. 93.
Our army, if it exists for honorable purposes only, will draw to it honorable men. It will call to it the best men of our race- men of skill and culture. It will not be recruited as so many modern nations are, from those who are industrially useless.
Michael Collins— A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 64
Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.
benjamin disraeli— Reply to a taunt by Daniel O'Connell [1].
I feel that "man-hating" is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.
robin morgan— "Lesbianism and Feminism: Synonyms or Contradictions?", in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, p 178.
Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle. To work with the hands or brain, according to our acquirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.
albert pike— Ch. XXII : Knight of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus, p. 343; This has also been published in some editions as "To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities…"
There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones.
George Bernard Shaw— #68. (Maxims for Revolutionists (1903))
Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.
— Henry Clay, reported in The Clay Code, or Text-Book of Eloquence, a Collection of Axioms, Apothegms, Sentiments … Gathered from the Public Speeches of Henry Clay, ed. G. Vandenhoff (1844), p. 93.
O Khalid! By Allah, you are honorable in my eyes, and you are dear to me. You will not have cause to complain of me after this day.
— Caliph Umar.(638 A.D)
Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space.
— Dejan Stojanovic in “Inner Space”
So long as you are a slave to the opinions of the many you have not yet approached freedom or tasted its nectar… But I do not mean by this that we ought to be shameless before all men and to do what we ought not; but all that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us.
— As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 47
All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.
william wordsworth— Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Second Edition (1800).
If we take away this foundation, that man is by nature foolish and sinful, fallen short of the glorious image of God, the Christian system falls at once; nor will it deserve as honorable an appellation as that of a cunningly devised fable.
— John Wesley, p. 190. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The most honorable, as well as the safest course, is to rely entirely upon valour.
— Book XXXIV, sec. 14 (History of Rome)
It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged. * * * We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
thomas paine— Thomas Paine, The Crisis. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
He risked a good and honorable death to stand up nonviolently for what is right.
— George Donnelly, "You are Tank Man," in the Arm Your Mind for Liberty blog (20 June 2012) Donnelly, George. You are Tank Man. Arm Your Mind for Liberty. Retrieved on 2014-03-01.
