Noblest Quotes

The Bible holds up before us ideals that are within sight of the weakest and the lowliest, and yet so high that the best and the noblest are kept with their faces turned ever upward. It carries the call of the Saviour to the remotest corners of the earth; on its pages are written the assurances of the present and our hopes for the future ~ William Jennings Bryan

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

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

'Time's noblest offspring is the last.' This line of Bishop Berkeley's expresses the real cause of the belief in progress in the animal creation. ~ Charles Lyell

The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the image of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that they have no posterity. ~ Francis Bacon

Cheerfulness prepares a glorious mind for all the noblest acts. ~ Elizabeth Ann Seton

The noblest question in the world is: 'What good may I do in it?' ~ Benjamin Franklin

We can be enthused by - yes, that's right, enthused - by the noblest of ideals, but only on condition that we don't have to expend any effort, that we don't have to make any sacrifices, and above all on condition that the ideals can be achieved free, gratis, that we needn't pay anything. Paying is something we really resent; on the other hand, receiving, that's really up our street, and that goes for everything. Let's have every kind of blessing (nothing less will do, it must be every kind) and, whatever happens, let no one tell us what to do on any score, and then we too shall prove that we can be all sweetness and light. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Love is not born of coarseness," Phoebe said quietly. "The ability to love is the noblest quality a man can possess. ~ Lisa Kleypas

By any reasonable standard, Riverside Drive would be considered the best street in New York. Where else, after all, are there such views-not of a narrow river, as there is across town, but of one of the noblest rivers in the United States. ~ Paul Goldberger

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices. ~ Frederick The Great

Hope is a constant companion in this life. It is the one thing that neither cruel nature, God, nor other men can wrench from us. Health, wealth, beloved brothers and sisters, children, friends, the past, the future - all can be stolen from us as easily as an unguarded purse. But our greatest treasure, hope, remains. It is a sturdy little motor within, purring, ticking, driving us on when reason would suggest surrender. It is both the most pathetic and noblest thing about us, the most absurd and the most admirable quality we possess, for as long as we have hope, we also have the capacity for love, for caring, for decency. ~ Dean Koontz

Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth - and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound. ~ Thomas Wolfe

It is a remarkable feat to be able to see past the inhumanity of the behavior and recognize the humanity of the person committing the atrocious acts. This is not weakness. This is heroic strength, the noblest strength of the human spirit. ~ Desmond Tutu

Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars. ~ Andre Gide

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities. ~ Mario Cuomo

Revolutions are like the most noxious dungheaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A Human Face I love to view and trace the passions of the soul. On it the spirit writes anew each thought and feeling on a scroll. There the mind it's evil doing tells, and there it's noblest deeds do speak; just as the ringing of the bells proclaims a knell or wedding feast.-author unknown ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious"? I believe that the world has never seen - and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distateful exertion, the world will never see - that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Forgiveness is the noblest vengeance. ~ Henry George Bohn

Let shining Charity adorn your zeal,
The noblest impulse generous minds can feel. ~ Aaron Hill

Mathematics is a vast adventure; its history reflects some of the noblest thoughts of countless generations. ~ Dirk Jan Struik

The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep. ~ Russell Baker

Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give. ~ David Livingstone

It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork. ~ Mark Twain

Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

Keep yourself active all the time. The best of noblest of actions is to bring comfort to the comfortless. ~ Dada J. P. Vaswani

The noblest thing a human being can experience is acceptance of the mystery ~ Paulo Coelho

The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Through this same man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. ~ Thomas Malory

A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram. ~ Karl Kraus

The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man. The wise person develops his brain, and opens his mind to the genius and spirit of the world's great ideas. He will feel inspired with the purest and noblest thoughts that have ever animated the spirit of humanity. ~ Alfred Armand Montapert

I am a black man, born in Jamaica, B.W.I., and have been living in America for the last years. It was the first time I had ever come face to face with such manifest, implacable hate of my race, and my feelings were indescribable … Looking about me with bigger and clearer eyes I saw that this cruelty in different ways was going on all over the world. Whites were exploiting and oppressing whites even as they exploited and oppressed the yellows and blacks. And the oppressed, groaning under the leash, evinced the same despicable hate and harshness toward their weaker fellows. I ceased to think of people and things in the mass. [O]ne must seek for the noblest and best in the individual life only: each soul must save itself. ~ Claude McKay

This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed. ~ Philip Schaff

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society. ~ H.L. Mencken

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. ~ Scott Ginsberg

The uncommon abilities and fortune of Severus have induced an elegant historian to compare him with the first and greatest of the Caesars. The parallel is, at least, imperfect. Where shall we find, in the character of Severus, the commanding superiority of the soul, the generous clemency, and the various genius, which could reconcile and unite the love of pleasure, the thirst of knowledge, and the fire of ambition? ⁴⁴

⁴⁴ Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan to exalt the character of Caesar, yet the idea he gives of that hero, in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same time making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the noblest panegyric. ~ Edward Gibbon

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As ~ Charles Darwin

Noblest. Bravest. What rot. There was no bravery in buying oneself out of difficulty. ~ Peter David

It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. ~ Oscar Wilde

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. ~ Ayn Rand

Goat cheese ... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth. ~ Russell Baker

In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. ~ John Milton

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Flints may be melted - we see it daily - but an ungrateful heart cannot be; not by the strongest and noblest flame. ~ Robert South

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the anci ~ Hermann Hesse

Auld Nature swears the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O; Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O! ~ Robert Burns

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Integrity is the noblest possession.
-Latin Proverb. ~ John Adair

There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may be sometimes temptations to be otherwise; but, all cards cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar, which, in all assays, can in himself protect him. ~ Owen Feltham

I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail. ~ Charles A. Beard

FALK. I feel myself like God's lost prodigal; I left Him for the world's delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I'll never leave that Light, - But stand its armed defender in the fight; Nothing shall part us, and our life shall prove A song of glory to triumphant love! ~ Henrik Ibsen

I know what those who want to interrupt the beneficent, healthy sleep of the people really want. They constantly cry to the people: 'Wake up! Become conscious! Be smart!' - and even as they pretend that the extraordinary increase in the number of schools, and the creation of a proud class of teachers in consequence, satisfies a powerful need for education, I know their real goal. They are fighting, and this is how they fight, against the natural hierarchy in the empire of the intellect; they seek to destroy the roots of the highest and noblest cultural powers that, bursting forth from the popular unconscious, have a maternal destiny: to give birth to, raise, and nurture genius. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Wine, one of the noblest cordials in nature. ~ John Wesley

Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers. ~ John Gardner

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable. ~ Oscar Wilde

Suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better. ~ Chang-rae Lee

The great lesson is, that unity is behind all. Call it God, Love, Spirit. Allah, Jehovah - it is the same unity that animates all life from the lowest animal to the noblest man. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying. ~ John Flavel

This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; [70] He only in a general honest thought And common good to all made one of them. His ~ William Shakespeare

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The violent but narrow passions that pass under the name of patriotism are not the noblest forms of human and social emotions. The world, or the people who, unfortunately, have most to say in governing the world, believe no such thing, and will not believe it when the representatives of States meet again to decide how to fill up the graves which they helped dig in Europe. ~ Leonard Woolf

Whatever noblest things the mind received,
More and more foreign matter spoils the theme;
And when the good of this world is achieved,
What's better seems an idle dream.
That gave us our life, the noblest urges
Are petrified in the earth's vulgar surges ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The noblest art is that of making others happy ~ P.T. Barnum

Morality in its noblest forms remains inexplicable unless one takes into account that power of growth in the human soul which has led generation after generation from lower religious and ethical standards to higher ones which often clash with worldly advantages. ~ Ellen Key

All dies! and not alone
The aspiring trees and men and grass;
The poets' forms of beauty pass,
And noblest deeds they are undone,
Even truth itself decays, and lo,
From truth's sad ashes pain and falsehood grow. ~ Herman Melville

The worst of misery
Is when a nature framed for noblest things
Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
Gasping from out the shallows. ~ George Eliot

Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,- Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best. ~ Lord Byron

I think it must be apparent to every thinking mind that the noblest of all professions is that of teaching, and that upon the effectiveness of that teaching hangs the destiny of nations. ~ David O. McKay

Sight is the noblest sense of man. ~ Albrecht Durer

Now, brethren, do not expect perfection in your choice of a mate. Do not be so particular that you overlook her most important qualities of having a strong testimony, living the principles of the gospel, loving home, wanting to be a mother in Zion, and supporting you in your priesthood responsibilities.
Of course, she should be attractive to you ...
And one good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are? ~ Ezra Taft Benson

We have three ways to act wisely. First by thinking. That's the noblest. Second by imitating. That's the easiest. And third by experience. This is the bitterest. ~ Anonymous

Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mold the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity. ~ Calvin Coolidge

[whiteness] has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were something else before they were white - Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish - and if all our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again. Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myth. I cannot call it. As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.

The new people are not original in this. Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies. If there has been, I have yet to discover it. But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal. America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization. One cannot, at once, cl ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The love of God has been described as the highest, noblest, strongest kind of love and the most joyous to the soul. ~ Bonnie L. Oscarson

If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl's weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God's noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

You would keep the people in their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid, so heartless? ~ Anonymous

Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature."6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. In ~ Terryl L. Givens

Hunting is the noblest sport yet devised by the hand of man. There were mighty hunters in the Bible, and all the caves where the cave men lived are full of carvings of assorted game the head of the house drug home. If you hunt to eat, or hunt for sport for something fine, something that will make you proud, and make you remember every single detail of the day you found him and shot him, that is good too. ~ Robert Ruark

America is an idea. And it's the solemn responsibility of each 'temporary' president to protect and nurture that noblest of all ideas - with integrity. This man, Mitt Romney, has shown - not through his experience, but through his actions and words - that he is unqualified to carry out that responsibility. ~ Jennifer Granholm

Lovely sweetness is the noblest power of woman, and is far fitter to prevail by parley than by battle. ~ Philip Sidney

Teaching is a sacred art. This is why the noblest druid is not the one who conjures fires and smoke but the one who brings the news and passes on the histories. The teacher, the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of men's minds and bodies, especially when he roams without allegiance to one chieftain or another. But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists upon telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice. ~ Kate Horsley

If the untimely battlefield deaths of generations of American heroes have taught us nothing else, it should be this unalterable fact: what you do with your time here on earth is far more important than the time you had to do it. Those who live most are those who love most, who act the noblest and do their best. ~ Michael Mullen

If an honest man is the noblest work of God, then Mr. Lincoln's title to high nobility is clear and unquestioned. ~ Matthew Simpson

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms. ~ F. Sionil Jose

The wisest and noblest teacher is nature itself. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

If God be God and man a creature made in image of the divine intelligence, his noblest function is the search for truth. ~ Morris West

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. ~ Walt Whitman

Here in the world, each human frailty Provides occasion for philosophy, And that is virtue's noblest exercise; ~ Moliere

Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind, but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the tradition of the intellectual life. ~ Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. ~ Oscar Wilde

MISCREANT, n. A person of the highest degree of unworth. Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present signification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution to the development of our language. ~ Ambrose Bierce

For the Humanist, ... head and heart ... must function together ... The constitution of the Phillips Exeter Academy reads: 'Though goodness without knowledge ... is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous ... Both united form the noblest character and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.' ~ Corliss Lamont

- Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.
- I will take the risk, said Stephen.
- And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had. ~ James Joyce

Tell this to ladies: how a hero man
Assail a thick and scandalous giant
Who casts true shadow in the sun,
And die, but play no truant.

This is more horrible: that the darling egg
Of the chosen people hatch a creature
Of noblest mind and powerful leg
Who cannot fathom nor perform his nature. ~ John Crowe Ransom

Learning from experience means, in practice, learning from suffering; the only schoolmaster. Everyone knows that this is so, even though they try to persuade themselves and their fellows otherwise. Only so is it possible to understand how it came about that, through all the Christian centuries, people have been prepared to accept the Cross, ostensibly a symbol of suffering, as the true image and guarantee of their creator's love and concern for them. To climb the highest, stoniest mountain to set it on its peak, to carry it to the remotest, darkest, most forbidding corners of the earth; to build great cathedrals to glorify it; to find in it the inspiration for the most sublime achievements and noblest lives over the last two thousand years. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions. ~ George F. Will