Honorable Quotes
|
The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
|
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)
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.
chuck hagel—
I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claim to perform that service are imperious.
Nathan Hale— Statement to Captain William Hull prior to his spying mission, as quoted in "Captain Nathan Hale (1755 - 1776)" by Rev. Edward Everett Hale.
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
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
Happiness does not fall out of the blue and dreams will not come true by themselves. We need to be down-to-earth and work hard. We should uphold the idea that working hard is the most honorable, noblest, greatest and most beautiful virtue.
xi jinping— As quoted in "Xi Jinping meets model workers" in cctv.com English (1 May 2013)
No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
zeno of citium— As quoted in Epistles No. 82, by Seneca
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))
An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.
millard fillmore— Speech (13 September 1844), Buffalo, New York, quoted in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser (14 September 1844). Fillmore had lost the Whig nomination for governor of New York. The newspaper summary was: "He entreated them to enter the contest with zeal and enthusiasm; but as they valued the sacredness of their cause, and the stability of their principles, to resort to no unfair means: that an honorable defeat was better than a dishonorable victory."
I know of no title that I deem more honorable than that of Professor of the Harvard Law School.
felix frankfurter— Of Law and Life and Other Things: Papers and Address of Felix Frankfurter (1965).
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
gabriel garcía márquez— Chapter 10
A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.
nassim nicholas taleb— p. 147 (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012))
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))
That above all, the friendship existing between the English East India Company and Travancore should be maintained at any risk and that full confidence should always be placed in the support and aid of honorable association.
— Marthanda Varma on his last message to his nephew Prince Rama Varma, in Travancore State Manual: with foreword by Ved from Victoria Institutions, P.23 This book is available for free on this link
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
What find you better or more honorable than age? Take the preeminence of it in everything; in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.
— Shakerley-Marmion, Antiquary, Act II, scene 1.
No evil is honorable; but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.
— As quoted in Epistles No. 82, by Seneca the Younger
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.
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
