Honorable Quotes
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I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
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More Honorable Quotes
I have sometimes thought there could be no stronger testimony in favor of Religion or against temporal Enjoyments even the most rational and manly than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent Advocates in the cause of Christ, & I wish you may give in your Evidence in this way. Such instances have seldom occurred, therefore they would be more striking and would be instead of a "Cloud of Witnesses."
james madison— Letter to William Bradford (September 1773), quoted in The Lustre of Our Country : The American Experience of Religious Freedom (2000) by John Thomas Noonan, p. 66
The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
thomas jefferson— Letter to Elbridge Gerry (13 May 1797).
Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.
george washington— Letter to Benedict Arnold (14 September 1775).
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
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
In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.
Joseph McCarthy— 1967 Vietnam,'Solutions'.
Were an energetic and judicious system to be proposed with your signature it would be a circumstance highly honorable to your fame... and doubly entitle you to the glorious republican epithet, The Father of your Country.
henry knox— Letter to Washington, urging Washington to attend the Philadelphia Convention
No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
zeno of citium— As quoted in Epistles No. 82, by Seneca
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)
The day of the last hypothesis would be also the day of the last observation... An hypothesis displaced by new facts dies an honorable death. If it has itself summoned to its trial the facts by which it is annihilated, it deserves even a monument of gratitude.
jacob henle— Handbook of Rational Pathology, 1846-1853
The most honorable, as well as the safest course, is to rely entirely upon valour.
livy— Book XXXIV, sec. 14
Modesty is that feeling by which honorable shame acquires a valuable and lasting authority.
cicero— Cicero, Rhetorical Invention, Book II, Section LVI.
All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.
william wordsworth— Preface (Lyrical Ballads (1798-1800))
The case of the conscience of Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, "How was it possible that all of you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?," replied that it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in Heaven."
hannah arendt— Ch. VIII (Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963))
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
gabriel garcía márquez— Chapter 10
Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.
vauvenargues, luc de clapiers, marquis de— p. 185. (Reflections and Maxims (1746))
So, our honest politicians and our honorable corporation heads owe it to their reputations to bring their activities out into the open.
— Section VI: “Let There Be Light”, p. 36 (Note: different pagination from other references here).
The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent . it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.
— I. F. Stone, The Haunted Fifties (1963).
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
It's enough that the two honorable sheiks, Sheik Osama and Sheik Ayman, remained like a lump in Bush 's throat, and he tastes their bitterness morning and night. Secondly, the Jihad continued until Judgment Day.
— Al-Qaeda Presents New Leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, Who Threatens to Carry out Attacks against Turkey May 2007
I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, becomes honorable by being necessary.
— Nathan Hale, remark to his friend, Captain William Hull, who attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for spy duty, early September 1776.—Isaac William Stuart, Life of Captain Nathan Hale, p. 94 (1856). While General Washington desperately needed someone to provide information on the strength and location of the enemy, he could not command someone to be a spy. He needed a paid spy or a volunteer. Hale was the sole volunteer. At the end of his mission, Hale was captured by the British and hanged on September 22, 1776. He was twenty-one years old.
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.
— Julian, As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 47
Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; But when the truth entails tremendous ruin, To speak dishonorably is pardonable.
— Creusa, fragment 323.
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?
— Histories, IX, 35:2 (Loeb) (The Histories)
Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised?
— Demian, in Some of My Best Friends are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers from Preschool to .., Judith Wynn Halsted, p.262
Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised?
— Hermann Hesse, in Some of My Best Friends are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers from Preschool to ... p.462
To me, baseball is as honorable as any other business. It is the most honest pastime in the world. It has to be, or it could not last a season out.
Charles Comiskey— American Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner (1859 - 1931)
