Quotes about Nobility

To be under pressure is inescapable. Pressure takes place through all the world: war, siege, the worries of state. We all know men who grumble under these pressures, and complain. They are cowards. They lack splendor. But there is another sort of man who is under the same pressure, but does not complain. For it is the friction which polishes him. It is pressure which refines and makes him noble.

It is higher and nobler to be kind.

Kindness is the essence of greatness and the fundamental characteristic of the noblest men and women I have known.

Stripped of their property, crushed and mutilated, they still embody the nobility of Israel and the eternity of God, while their enemy—who is your enemy as well—embodies all that is most vile in man. I shall act not as their detractor, but as their melitz yosher, their intercessor.

Kind hearts are more than coronets / And simple faith than Norman blood.

'Tis only noble to be good.Kind hearts are more than coronets,And simple faith than Norman blood.

Heroes are heroes precisely because they are willing to do what everyone else won't—oppose the popular voice. But we will know what you have done. And in your heart, so will you. And that is more than heroic. It is noble.

REST.—If a man should be able to assent to this doctrine as he ought, that we are all sprung from God in an especial manner, and that God is the father both of men and of gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean thoughts about himself. But if Cæsar (the emperor) should adopt you, no one could endure your arrogance; and if you know that you are the son of Zeus, will you not be elated?

In him was vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness.

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.

The nobility of what humans could be capable of, if only they weren't human.

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.