Quotes about Duty

Marriage equality is the law of the land. Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law - end of story.

To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards of men.

The most miserable man or woman is the one who knows what is right and does not do it.

Let no guilty man escape, if it can he avoided. . . . No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

To serve the Word is to fulfill the highest function of which man is capable.

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace or their father and mother.

If a superior give any order to one who is under him which is against that man's conscience, although he do not obey it yet he shall not be dismissed.

The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.

If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.

Javert, though hideous, was not ignoble.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,—error.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.