On Duty Quotes

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

I declare my belief that it is not your duty to do anything that is not to your own interest. Whenever it is unquestionably your duty to do a thing, then it will benefit you to perform that duty.

He would still see it as his duty to shut up and get on with it, not cause any trouble. In our own time we've made a hero of the rebel, and it's more heroic to speak up.

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probably be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes.

Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive.

Keep we to the broad truths before us; duty here; knowledge comes alone in the Hereafter.

[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.

Judges are appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. And it is our duty to ask questions on great issues that matter to the American people and to speak for them.

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

The framers of the Constitution realized that . . . there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought, and so they created the Senate to fulfill that high and vitally important duty.

She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty.

Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one's mind was a paramount duty.

You look as if you had lived on duty and it hadn't agreed with you.

We all have an interest, and a duty to future generations, to ensure that the benefits of mobility that we now take for granted, do not place an intolerable burden on our environment

My mother's studies stopped with the third year of primary school, my father with the first. They taught me a deep sense of duty. But nobody was involved in politics in my family.

Remember that you are in actor in a play of such a kind that the author chooses...For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part belongs to another.

All quiet along the Potomac tonight, 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.

People talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man's duty to his family may make a rigid course seem a selfish indulgence of his own righteousness.

Against destiny I fulfilled my duty. Uselessly? No, for I fulfilled it.

The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.

Think not thy love to God merits God's love to thee; His acceptance of thy duty crowns His own gifts in thee; man's love to God is nothing but a faint reflection of God's love to man.

More things are left undone through neglect of duty than through neglect of self-interest.

I now feel that I have a moral duty to course correct and say wait a minute, it's not just for adults.

I'm convinced that our duty to provide advice and consent for justices of the Supreme Court is our most important constitutional responsibility.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

It is not by change of circumstances, but by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty.

Curiosity creeps into the houses of the unfortunate and the needy under the name of duty or of pity.

The way to transmute your iron duty into gold in everyone's eyes is this: always deliver more than you promise.

It is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! It may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one's neighbor.

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty.

I believe it is my duty to share the gifts I have learned. How dare I have the tools for finding serenity and not share them with the world?

It's true that the man stealer is always lurking around the corner it's just our job and your duty to make sure they back up!

What rare days were those, When my chief duty was to write a song.

The glass of your life is darkened, and darkly through it you see distorted and ghastly fragments of duty and destiny.

It is the privilege and duty of the present generation to pass on to its successors, unimpaired, the heritage of liberty bequeathed to it by the founders of the Republic.

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.

Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

You know I have duties──we both have duties──before which feeling must be sacrificed.

God, immortality, duty - how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.

Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.

It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.

Old fashioned as it may seem to some, it is my duty to serve my country. And I didn't seek this job but I want to do it, and I will do my very best.

The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory.

We owe to our Mother-Country the Duty of Subjects but will not pay her the Submission of Slaves.