Quotes
Quotes about Duty
Your duty is, as ferre as I can gesse.
O, good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband.
Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own.
I do perceive here a divided duty.
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. "Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness."
When I 'm not thank'd at all, I 'm thank'd enough;
I 've done my duty, and I 've done no more.
Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.
England expects every man to do his duty.
If this bill [for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State] passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,--amicably if they can, violently if they must.
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Not once or twice in our rough-island story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms and did my duty faithfully.
He could see naught but vanity in beauty
And naught but weakness in a fond caress
And pitied men whose views of Christian duty
Allowed indulgence in such foolishness.
God give us men. The time demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.
Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.
You would not think any duty small,
If you yourself were great.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead--
The picket's off duty forever.
? John Bartlett, compFor me the diamond dawns are set
In rings of beauty,
And all my ways are dewy wet
With pleasant duty.
He were n't no saint--but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim.
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That would n't shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing--
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.
