Duty Quotes

No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I guess all I'm trying to say is that language may be large, unwieldy, and in a perpetual state of transformation - in other words, language is like love - but, unlike Dr. D, I don't think it's greater than we are. I think it's our duty, in fact, to corral it into coherence; to suppress its more unruly tendencies; to verify its meaning and, more importantly, its efficacy; to test its subjectivity-bridging potential. (Again, we should treat it very much like love.) ~ Alena Graedon

Ironically, the only gun control in 19th century England was the policy forbidding police to have arms while on duty. ~ Don Kates

The duty of lovers is to tarnish the Golden Rule ~ Leonard Cohen

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. ~ Nikola Tesla

But sometimes it's like you just meet someone and you just know that you're totally connected, and this person is, like, your brother - or your sister. Even if they don't, like, recognize it, you feel it. And in a lot of ways it don't matter if they do or they don't see that for what it is - all you can do is put the feeling out there. That's your duty. Then you just wait and see what comes back to you. That's the deal. ~ Zadie Smith

It is in no way, shape or form your cosmic duty or responsibility to take away the pain of other people. This is because by absorbing the pain of others, you are depriving them of a vital element of their spiritual evolution and karmic responsibility. ~ Mateo Sol

He who fails to know his real and true competitor shall never be able to give a good account of his stewardship in life! Your true and real competitor is your real and true solemn duty to your Maker! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Jesus Christ does not teach us a spirituality 'of closed eyes,' but one of 'alertness,' one which entails an absolute duty to take notice of the needs of others and of situations involving those whom the Gospel tells us are our neighbors ... The gaze of Jesus, what 'his eyes' teach us, leads to human closeness, solidarity, giving time, sharing our gifts and even our material goods. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I have come from the End of the World. From the River of Dreams, through the gauntlet and the Briar and the Deep Wyld, in order to stand before you today. I have but one request - to take my place at your side. To resume my duty as your knight, and to protect you and your kingdom for as long as I draw breath. ~ Julie Kagawa

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other. ~ Millard Fillmore

If you walk around proudly when someone greets you with respect or says, 'welcome, welcome', you will suffer a loss, right? Here, it was the other person's duty [social obligation] to welcome you, but you shouldn't fall short. So you should immediately check your balance-sheet (of karma) to find out where you sustained a loss! ~ Dada Bhagwan

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories - of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in it's body keeping always longing to be known. ~ Justin Cronin

I like to hope that there are more good people in the world than evil people' she said. 'I would like to hope that too', the old man said, 'but I don't. There are good people, however, and our duty in life is to be one of them, even though we will generally be outnumbered. ~ Janette Turner Hospital

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. ~ Joseph Brodsky

From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation. ~ Henry Miller

There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Duty was not untinged by ambition. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Last semester was intense," I said to Dad.

"Intense?" he echoed, picking up my file. "Let's see. On your first day at Hecate, you were attacked by a werewolf. You insulted a teacher, which resulted in semester-long cellar duty with one Archer Cross. According to the notes, the two of you became 'close.' Apparently close enough for you to see the mark of L'Occhio di Dio on his chest.

I flushed at that, and felt Mom's arm tighten around me. Over the past six months, I'd filled her in on a lot of the story with Archer, but not all of it.

Specifically, the whole me-making-out-in-the-cellar-with-a-murderous-warlock-working-with-the-Eye-part. ~ Rachel Hawkins

There's going to be a lot of eating. My listeners have tweeted me and said "You've just got to keep eating, keep your energy up and have someone on duty to give you a massage if you need it." It will be a case of getting it done and making sure I don't get too cold, because that's crucial for the muscles. So that's all going to be taken care of. But really there's not much you can do - if you start cramping up you've just got to get on with it. ~ Greg James

People constantly requesting government intervention are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. ~ Margaret Thatcher

It was, Eliza Hamilton Holly noted pointedly, the imperative duty that Eliza had bequeathed to all her children: Justice shall be done to the memory of my Hamilton. ~ Ron Chernow

Artistic prejudices are always the most difficult to root out. Critics - whose duty should be to see beyond the pretensions of artists and the public's passing fancies - often allow themselves to be persuaded by the way authors present their work, by what they say they have achieved, or else are guided by whatever has been a wild success - usually in order to take the opposing view - and which had been damningly labelled 'popular. ~ Javier Marias

Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself. ~ Charlotte Bronte

We are to learn our duty from the Lord, and then we are to act in all diligence, never being lazy or slothful. The pattern is simple but not easy to follow. We are so easily distracted. ~ Henry B. Eyring

A woman cannot live in the light of intellect. Society forbids it. Those conventional frivolities, which are called her 'duties', forbid it. Her 'domestic duties', high-sounding words, which, for the most part, are but bad habits (which she has not the courage to enfranchise herself from, the strength to break through), forbid it. ~ Florence Nightingale

Your duty is not to fear the storm, but to swim to the shore. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The greatest want of the world is the want of men - men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall. ~ Ellen G. White

The dead man's nephew, excused from this duty, walks far ahead out of earshot. We are free as we go stumbling and sweating along to say exactly what we please, without fear of offending. "Heavy son of a bitch. ... " "All blown up like he is, you'd think he'd float like a balloon." "Let's just hope he don't explode." "He won't. We let the gas out." "What about lunch?" somebody asks; "I'm hungry." "Eat this." "Why'd the bastard have to go so far from the road?" "There's something leaking out that zipper." "Never mind, let's try to get in step here," the sheriff says. "Goddamnit, Floyd, you got big feet." "Are we going in the right direction?" "I wonder if the old fart would walk part way if we let him out of that bag?" "He won't even say thank you for the ride." "Well I hope this learned him a lesson, goddamn him. I guess he'll stay put after this. ... " Thus we meditate upon the stranger's death. ~ Edward Abbey

The day you accept a position or promotion under the handshake of quid pro quo in exchange to look the other way you forfeit the duty to lead by example. ~ Donavan Nelson Butler

If ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who's not after your soul. ~ Ayn Rand

This position will not be disputed, so long as it is admitted that the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct, or that the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds ... would on the contrary deter him from the undertaking, when he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the work ... ~ Alexander Hamilton

[Our] first and foremost duty [is] to seek the Lord until we open the path of communication from God to our own soul. ~ Brigham Young

Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics is not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do. ~ Aldous Huxley

When duty calls, that is when character counts. ~ William Safire

The fight for truth ... is not just our right as free citizens of free societies. It is our duty as citizens of the earth. ~ Vandana Shiva

Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Most of us don't mind doing what we ought to do when it doesn't interfere with what we want to do, but it takes discipline and maturity to do what we ought to do whether we want to or not. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,
what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it. ~ Thomas Carlyle

There's no substitute for hard work and effort beyond the call of duty. That is what strengthens the soul and ennobles one's character. ~ Walter Camp

England expects that every man will do his duty. ~ Horatio Nelson

If we have abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment. ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

Character is doing what you don't want to do but know you should do. ~ Joyce Meyer

If I don't hold myself to the highest standards, who will? ~ Aaron Dennis

Remain at your post and do your duty - for the glory of God and His kingdom. ~ Charles Colson

I feel it is my duty to plod on, while daylight shall last ... ~ Adoniram Judson

The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do. ~ Lord Byron

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. ~ Immanuel Kant

The Church's roots are in the teaching of the apostles, the authentic witnesses of Christ, but she looks to the future, she has the firm consciousness of being sent - sent by Jesus - of being missionary, bearing the name of Jesus by her prayer, proclaiming it and testifying to it. A Church that is closed in on herself and in the past, a Church that only sees the little rules of behavior, of attitude, is a Church that betrays her own identity; a closed Church betrays her own identity! Then, let us rediscover today all the beauty and responsibility of being the Church apostolic! And remember this: the Church is apostolic because we pray - our first duty - and because we proclaim the Gospel by our life and by our words. ~ Pope Francis

Doctors have an ethical duty to follow the practices and standards of care. ~ Bob McDonnell

It is not the novelist's job to preach; it is his duty to show. ~ Anthony Burgess

They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women. It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us. ~ Jo Nesbo

And now of a sudden my illusion vanished. What was my body to me? A kind of flunkey in my service. Let my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and the boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.

Your son is in a burning house. Nobody can hold you back. You may burn up, but what do you think of that? You are ready to bequeath the rags of your body to any man who will take them. You discover that what you set so much store by is trash. You would sell your hand, if need be, to give a hand to a friend. It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you. Your body belongs to you: it is not you. Are you about to strike an enemy? No threat of bodily harm can hold you back. You? It is the death of your enemy that is you. You? It is the rescue of your child that is you. In that moment you exchange yourself against something else; and you have no feeling tat you lost by the exchange. Your members? Tools. A tool snaps in your hand: how important is that tool? You exchange yourself against the death of your enemy, the rescue of your child, the recovery of your patient, the perfection of your theorem...Your true significance becomes dazzlingly evident. Your true name is duty, hatred, love, child, theorem. There is no other you than this. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Grace had filled those lonely places, replacing them with laughter and conversation. She'd given him the purpose he needed there in his home to maintain his balance in a world of stark duty. ~ Christine Feehan

We all have the duty to do good. ~ Pope Francis

Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she beheld this very large and very loud excrescence on the little party. Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: 'Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!' still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn't, or conscientiously couldn't, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own account. You were to go to the offices of the Haven of P ~ Charles Dickens

It is ill to offer God one duty stained with the blood of another. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I fell asleep and dreamed that life was only Happiness.
I woke and discovered that life was Duty.
I did my Duty and discovered that life was Happiness. ~ Paulo Coelho

Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty. ~ Woody Allen

I feel some kind of duty to be really, really honest as a writer. The same is true of my songwriting. ~ Juliana Hatfield

To be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed ... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In boot camp, I was warned about the double standards in the Navy. Petty Officer Hunter told us that Navy men were horny animals eager to stick their dicks in something warm and wet. That was socially acceptable. However, females were held at a higher standard. Females serving sea duty was a new concept, only a decade or two old when I enlisted. I was one of the first women allowed on destroyers. Therefore to show our gratitude for being granted one inch towards male equality, we had to work a hundred times harder for a worthy image.
Hunter informed us that we had to work hard to establish a decent reputation at our command. If we acted like a slut, we would be treated like a slut. One slip would permanently brand us. ~ Maggie Young

I have performed my duty to my God, my country, and my family. I have nothing to fear in approaching death. To me it is the mere shadow of God's protecting wing ... Here I will rest in quiet and peace beyond the reach of calumny's poisoned shaft, the influence of envy and jealous enemies, where treason and traitors or State backsliders and hypocrites in church can have no peace. ~ Andrew Johnson

A good deed is not just a duty, but above all, a privilege. ~ Shari Arison

It was my duty to give them the best show possible. Say you've got a timid little preacher in North Carolina or somewhere. He'll bring in visiting evangelists to keep his church going. We'd come in and hit the crowd up and we were superstars. It's the charisma of the evangelist that the audience believes in and comes to see. ~ Marjoe Gortner

Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad's of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever. ~ Jonathan Edwards

Duty. That was a word I hated as much as tradition. ~ Mary E. Pearson

In the performance of our duty one feeling should direct us; the case we should consider as our own, and we should ask ourselves, whether, placed under similar circumstances, we should choose to submit to the pain and danger we are about to inflict. ~ Astley Cooper

Standing there in the soddie door, she seemed two personalities. One argued bitterly that it was impossible for love to keep going when there was no hope for the future, suggested that there was no use trying to keep it going. The other said sternly that marriage was not the fulfillment of a passion, - marriage was the fulfillment of love. And love was sometimes pleasure and sometimes duty. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

The real war will never get in the books. ~ Walt Whitman

Mortal duty has weight, things that have weight have gravity, and so the duty to bear mortal responsibility pulled me back. ~ Paul Kalanithi

The Grand Duke [of Tuscany] ... after observing the Medicaean plants several times with me ... has now invited me to attach myself to him with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of Philosopher and Principal Mathematicial to His Highness; without the duties of office to perform, but with the most complete leisure; so that I can complete my Treatises ... ~ Galileo Galilei

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Without the Guard and Reserve, our active duty troops could hardly deploy. ~ John Spratt

Every extension of the functions and power of the State beyond its primary duty of maintaining peace and justice should be scrutinized with jealous vigilance. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you. ~ Ken Wilber

Mission is a duty about which one must say 'Woe to me if I do not evangelize' (1 Corinthians 9:16) ... redemption and mission are acts of love [because] those who proclaim the Gospel participate in the charity of Christ. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

In a sick world, it is the first duty of the artist to get well. ~ Jean Toomer

The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter. ~ George Washington

Duty is bitter to taste but sweet to drink ~ Rosamund Hodge

Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily procession of love and duty. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Think of responsibility as a blessing, not a burden. ~ Haresh Sippy

The important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't. ~ Ayn Rand

A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him. ~ Albert Kesselring

Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them, discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that suggests asceticism, spirituality, or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't believe him," said Hermione in a very unsteady voice, the moment they were out of earshot of Hagrid. "I don't believe him. I really don't believe him ... "
"Calm down," said Harry.
"Calm down!" she said feverishly. "A giant! A giant in the forest! And we're supposed to give him English lessons! Always assuming, of course, we can get past the herd of murderous centaurs on the way in and out! I - don't - believe - him! ~ J.K. Rowling

An educator's most important task, one might say his holy duty, is to see to it that no child is discouraged at school, and that a child who enters school already discouraged regains his self-confidence through his school and his teacher. This goes hand in hand with the vocation of the educator, for education is possible only with children who look hopefully and joyfully upon the future. ~ Alfred Adler

One of the promising indications of a renewal in the Church's missionary consciousness in recent decades, has been the growing desire of many lay men and women [ ... ] to cooperate generously in the 'missio ad gentes.' As Vatican Council II stressed, the work of evangelization is a fundamental duty incumbent upon the whole People of God. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me. ~ William Shakespeare

I firmly believe that if members of Congress fail to perform their most basic duty in passing a budget, then they do not deserve to be paid. ~ Kurt Schrader

The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other. ~ David Hume

The duty of the individual farmer, at this time, is to increase his production, particularly of food crops. ~ David F. Houston

Two hundred metres away from the cafe in Colaba police station, the duty inspector heard the rounds tumble and fizz, wondering if they were from an AK-47. ...The inspector buttonholed two constables armed with standard issue .303 bolt-action rifles. They were so antiquated that they were no longer in production in India...At most city police stations these and bamboo lathis were the only weapons available. ~ Cathy Scott-Clark

In the Middle East, optimism is a virtue; realism – a duty. ~ Raphael Cohen-Almagor

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living. ~ Walter Rauschenbusch

In regard to duties, if we all agreed that every one has a duty not to hasten death, then we could properly conclude it is wrong to hasten death regardless of the consequences. And we could properly conclude that it is wrong to assist such a death. But we do not all agree. Some of us believe our duty is to relieve human suffering or to allow freedom of human choice and that aid in dying is consistent with that duty. ~ Byron Chell

If people believe that they are marrying out of love and free choice rather than out of duty, they are more likely to decide, if love should die, that the free choice to join together is no more significant than the free choice to part, and to look for love elsewhere; those married out of duty expect less love to begin with, and what duty has brought together, duty may keep together. ~ Stephen L. Carter

If we are striving, if we are working, if we are trying, to the best of our ability, to improve day by day, then we are in the line of our duty. ~ Heber J. Grant

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind. ~ Abraham Lincoln