Rise to your duty,
This is the hour. [ Byron ]
Love is kin to duty. [ Lewis Morris ]
Consult duty, not events. [ Landor ]
Do to-day thy nearest duty. [ Goethe ]
Man cannot choose his duties. [ George Eliot ]
Hath the spirit of all beauty
Kissed you in the path of duty? [ Anna Katharine Green ]
Duty is the demand of the hour. [ Goethe ]
New occasions teach new duties. [ James Russell Lowell ]
Necessity is stronger than duty. [ Seneca ]
Duty done is the soul's fireside. [ Browning ]
Who escapes a duty avoids a gain. [ Theodore Parker ]
O thou sculptor, painter, poet,
Take this lesson to thy heart;
That is best which lieth nearest;
Shape from that thy work of art. [ Longfellow ]
Put thou thy trust in God;
In duty's path go on;
Fix on His word thy steadfast eye;
So shall thy work be done. [ Martin Luther ]
Duties are ours; events are God's. [ Cecil ]
The sense of duty pursues us ever. [ Joseph Cook ]
Step by step lift bad to good,
Without halting, without rest.
Lifting Better up to Best;
Planting seeds of knowledge pure.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So nigh is God to man.
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Obedience sums up our entire duty. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Then on! then on! where duty leads,
My course be onward still. [ Bishop Heber ]
What by duty's voice is bidden.
There, where duty's star may guide,
Thither follow, that accomplish,
Whatsoever else betide. [ R. C. Trench ]
Stern daughter of the voice of God! [ Wordsworth ]
Simple duty hath no place for fear. [ Whittier ]
Silence is the eternal duty of man. [ Carlyle ]
Do the duty which lies nearest thee. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Peace is the first duty of a citizen. [ Count Schulenburg-Kehnert after the battle of Jena ]
There is no moment without some duty. [ Cicero ]
Love can do much, but duty still more. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty. [ Cicero ]
Do well the duty that lies before you. [ Pittachus ]
We have an intuitive sense of our duty. [ Swift ]
Sympathy is especially a Christian duty. [ Spurgeon ]
Happiness is the natural flower of duty. [ Phillips Brooks ]
Certainly this is a duty, not a sin,
Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness. [ John Wesley ]
England expects every man to do his duty. [ Horatio Nelson ]
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband. [ William Shakespeare ]
Generous as brave.
Affection, kindness, and the sweet office
Of love and duty, were to him as needful
As his daily bread. [ Rogers ]
I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty -
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? [ Ellen Sturgis Hooper ]
Thy sum of duty let two words contain
(O! May they graven in thy heart remain!)
Be humble and be just. [ Prior ]
The first duty of a woman is to be pretty. [ Mme. de Girardin ]
Every mission constitutes a pledge of duty. [ Mazzini ]
Oh world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. [ Browning ]
Not once or twice in our rough island story,
The path of duty was the way to glory. [ Tennyson ]
Thanks to the gods; my boy has done his duty. [ Addison ]
Oh, love forever lost,
And with it faith gone out! what is't remains
But duty, though the path be rough and trod
By bruised and bleeding feet? [ Lewis Morris ]
Duty is the inner soul, the life of education. [ Michelet ]
Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude. [ Goldsmith ]
Perish discretion when it interferes with duty. [ Hannah More ]
Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty. [ William Shakespeare ]
When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough:
I've done my duty; and I've done no more. [ Fielding ]
That is not a duty in which there is not virtue. [ Hitopadesa ]
Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round
Of Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make
The orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly
Upon its path--the Lord of Life alone
Knows to what goal of Good; work on, live on. [ Lewis Morris ]
Duty grows everywhere - like children, like grass. [ Emerson ]
Not liberty but duty is the condition of existence. [ Mathilde Blind ]
The reward of one duty is the power to fulfil another. [ Mrs. Marian Lewes Cross (pen name George Eliot) ]
If a daughter you have, she's the plague of your life,
No peace shall you know though you've buried your wife!
At twenty she mocks at the duty you taught her -
Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter! [ Sheridan ]
Zeal and duty ... on occasion's forelock watchful wait. [ Milton ]
Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty. [ Samuel Smiles ]
A promise against law or duty, is void in its own nature. [ Proverb ]
The sun may do its duty, though your grapes are not ripe. [ Proverb ]
Try to do your duty, and you at once know what is in you. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
God never imposes a duty without giving the time to do it. [ Ruskin ]
He that eats well and drinks well should do his duty well. [ Proverb ]
The latest gospel in this world is, know thy work and do it. [ Carlyle ]
Duty and today are ours; results and futurity belong to God. [ Horace Greeley ]
Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known. [ Ruskin ]
None should expect to prosper who go out of the way of duty. [ Aughey ]
Of how few lives does not stated duty claim the greater part? [ Johnson ]
Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force. [ Joseph Joubert ]
Knowledge of our duties is the most useful part of philosophy. [ Whately ]
The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty. [ Hazlitt ]
Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest. [ Bishop Wilkins ]
Never anything can be amiss, when simpleness and duty tender it. [ William Shakespeare ]
Whether your time calls you to live or die, do both like a prince. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
A speculative despair is unpardonable where it is our duty to act. [ Burke ]
Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty. [ Maclaren ]
In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty. [ St. Augustine ]
Zeal and duty are not slow; But on occasion's forelock watchful wait. [ Milton ]
They do well, or do their duty, who with alacrity do what they ought. [ La Bruyere ]
Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has for its first duty to forgive. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]
What makes the breaking of all oaths a holy duty? - food and clothes. [ Butler ]
To what gulfs a single deviation from the track of human duties leads! [ Byron ]
In common things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. [ Froude ]
Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. [ Bible ]
Repentance is a magistrate that exacts the strictest duty and humility. [ Clarendon ]
Duty is what one expects from others - it is not what one does oneself. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
As birds are made to fly and rivers to run, so the soul to follow duty. [ Ramayana ]
Women are women, but to become mothers they go to duty through pleasure. [ Joubert ]
He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity. [ J. C. Lavater ]
Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. [ William Shakespeare ]
Duty only frowns when you flee from it; follow it, and it smiles upon you. [ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ]
A mother's duty to her children is second only to her duty to her Creator. [ Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock ]
If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Let us not run out of the path of duty, lest we run into the way of danger. [ Rowland Hill ]
Every duty, even the least duty, involves the whole principle of obedience. [ Archbishop Manning ]
To persevere in one's duty, and to be silent, is the best answer to calumny. [ George Washington ]
Obedience and resignation are our personal offerings upon the altar of duty. [ Hosea Ballou ]
It is the duty of every one to strive to gain and deserve a good reputation. [ Atterbury ]
Duty, especially out of the domain of love, is the veriest slavery in the world. [ Timothy Titcomb ]
You will always find those who think they know your duty better than you know it. [ Emerson ]
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect. [ Rousseau ]
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers. [ Amiel ]
The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, the last duty done. [ George MacDonald ]
The whisper of a beautiful woman can be heard farther than the loudest call of duty.
Cold duty's path is not so blithely trod Which leads the mournful spirit to its God. [ William Herbert ]
A deliberate rejection of duty prescribed by already recognized truth His moral law. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty. [ Burke ]
The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do. [ Byron ]
Every one regards his duty as a troublesome master from whom he would like to be free. [ La Roche ]
The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our duty and find in it our pleasure. [ Mme. de Motteville ]
Gratitude is a duty none can be excused from, because it is always at our own disposal. [ Charron ]
Knowledge is the hill which few; may hope to climb; duty is the path that all may tread. [ Lewis Morris ]
There is no monarch's signet ring that is typical of as much duty as the wedding-ring is. [ J. Powell ]
God governs the world, and we have only to do our duty wisely, and leave the issue to Him. [ John Jay ]
The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love. [ George MacDonald ]
Happy he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens the ring of necessity into a ring of duty. [ Carlyle ]
There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty. [ Madame Swetchine ]
I cannot but destroy, or at least impair most seriously the clearness of our mental vision. [ H. P. Liddon ]
There is no evil which we cannot face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. [ Daniel Webster ]
Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue. [ Cowper ]
Resolved: To do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good of mankind in general. [ Jonathan Edwards ]
It is better to keep children to their duty by a sense of honor and by kindness than by fear. [ Terence ]
To be humble to our superiors is duty; to our equals, courtesy; to our inferiors, generosity. [ Owen Feltham ]
One's duty as a gentleman should never interfere with one's pleasures in the slightest degree. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Nature had made occupation a necessity; society makes it a duty; habit may make it a pleasure. [ Capelle ]
I have learned that to do one's next duty is to take a step toward all that is worth possessing. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. [ Daniel Webster ]
Woman's first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Let us have faith that right makes might; and, in that faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
There is nothing in the universe I fear but that I shall not know all my duty, or shall fail to do it. [ Mary Lyon ]
It is one of the worst of errors to suppose that there is any other path of safety except that of duty. [ Aughey ]
Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in. [ Theodore Parker ]
Duty is one and invariable: it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity. [ Thoreau ]
Can man or woman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace, or their father and mother. [ George Eliot ]
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it. [ Lincoln ]
It is thy duty oftentimes to do what thou wouldst not; thy duty, too, to leave undone that thou wouldst do. [ Thomas a Kempis ]
Stern duties need not speak sternly. He who stood firm before the thunder worshipped the still small voice.
[ Sidney Dobell ]
The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty. [ Schiller ]
The two most beautiful things in the universe are the starry heavens above us and the feeling of duty within us. [ An Indian sage ]
The most fruitful and elevating influence I have ever seemed to meet has been my impression of obligation to God. [ Daniel Webster ]
Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not. [ Fenelon ]
One futile person, that maketh it his glory to tell, will do more hurt than many that know it their duty to conceal. [ Bacon ]
What are the aims which are at the same time duties in life? The perfecting of ourselves and the happiness of others. [ Jean Paul ]
It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension. [ Plutarch ]
Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble. [ Phillips Brooks ]
Of an accountable creature, duty is the concern of every moment, since he is every moment pleasing or displeasing God. [ Robert Hall ]
Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element. [ Henry Giles ]
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. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its Cause. [ Beecher ]
I see nothing worth living for but the divine virtue which endures and surrenders all things for truth, duty, and mankind. [ Channing ]
All duties are matter of conscience, with this restriction that a superior obligation suspends the force of an inferior one. [ L'Estrange ]
A nation, as an individual, has duties to fulfill appointed by God and Duty - the command of heaven, the eldest voice of God. [ Charles Kingsley ]
Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty. [ Ulysses S. Grant ]
Duty speaks with the lawful authority of many voices; pleasure has no strength except in the longing desire of the hungry unit. [ Edith Simcox ]
Do your duty, and don't swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God. [ B. R. Haydon ]
Character is made up of small duties faithfully performed - of self-denials, of self-sacrifices, of kindly acts of love and duty. [ Anonymous ]
Duty is the end and aim of the highest life; the truest pleasure of all is that derived from the consciousness of its fulfillment. [ Samuel Smiles ]
The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains. [ La Bruyere ]
I wish it were never one's duty to quarrel with anybody; I do so hate it: but not to do it sometimes is to smile in the devils face. [ George MacDonald ]
Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer. [ Professor Vinet ]
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. [ Chapin ]
There is a magic in the word duty, something I know not what, which sustains magistrates, inflames warriors, and cools married people. [ H. Dupuy ]
Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action. [ Hare ]
The primal duties shine aloft like stars; The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, Are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers. [ Wordsworth ]
Let men of all ranks, whether they are successful or unsuccessful, whether they triumph or not - let them do their duty, and rest satisfied. [ Plato ]
The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others. [ John Ruskin ]
To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair. [ Pascal ]
Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it. [ La Bruyere ]
Books are the windows through which the soul looks out; a house without books is like a room without windows. It is a man's duty to have books. [ H. W. Beecher ]
The soul that is the abode of chastity acquires an energy which enables her to surmount with ease the obstacles that lie along the path of duty. [ Joubert ]
Brethren, life is passing; youth goes, strength decays. But duty performed, work done for God - this abides forever, this alone is imperishable. [ Richard Fuller ]
How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Essay to do thy duty, and thou knowest at once what is in thee. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Happy is he to whom his business itself becomes a puppet, who at length can play with it, and amuse himself with what his situation makes his duty. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man's self, and an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets or danger lies in his way. [ Locke ]
When any duty is to be done, it is fortunate for you if you feel like doing it; but, if you do not feel like it, that is no reason for not doing it. [ W. Gladden ]
I am not aware that payment, or even favors, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest morality and highest importance. [ Charles Kingsley ]
Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil. [ Amiel ]
Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages. [ Lavater ]
Little eyes must be good-tempered or they are ruined. They have no other resource. But this will beautify them enough. They are made for laughing, and should do their duty. [ Leigh Hunt ]
The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character. [ Shenstone ]
Whatever our place allotted to us by Providence, that, for us, is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us, not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it. [ Thomas Edwards ]
Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always - this is duty. [ Amiel ]
Great is the power of Eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears. [ Sterne ]
True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being. [ Goldsmith ]
O brave poets! keep back nothing, nor mix falsehood with the whole; look up Godward; speak the truth in worthy song from earnest soul; hold, in high poetic duty, truest truth the fairest beauty! [ Mrs. Browning ]
Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night. It is the shadow that cleaves to us, go where we will, and which leaves us only when we leave the light of life. [ William Ewart Gladstone ]
The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood. [ Simms ]
When you leave the unimpaired hereditary freehold to your children, you do but half your duty. Both liberty and property are precarious, unless the possessors have sense and spirit enough to defend them. [ Junius ]
Not until right is founded upon reverence will it be secure; not until duty is based upon love will it be complete; not until liberty is based on eternal principles will it be full, equal, lofty, and universal. [ Henry Giles ]
A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily processiona of love and duty. [ Chapin ]
Gifts of rings by lovers have always been common; but how pleasant when the husband can look to the past, to the present, to the future, with feelings of love, honor, and duty, and not as is often the case with repentance. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. [ Thomas Carlyle ]
An honest reputation is within the reach of all men; they obtain it by social virtues, and by doing their duty. This kind of reputation, it is true, is neither brilliant nor startling, but it is often the most useful for happiness. [ Duclos ]
Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty. [ Bishop Doane ]
Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished. [ Mme. de Stael ]
Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain. [ Johnson ]
There are certain times in our life when we find ourselves in circumstances, that not only press upon us, but seem to weigh us down altogether. They give us, however, not only the opportunity, but they impose on us the duty of elevating ourselves, and thereby fulfilling the purpose of the Divine Being in our creation. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health. [ Beecher ]
Pity and forbearance, and long-sufferance and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness. [ Zimmermann ]
The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort. [ Ruskin ]
It is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion. [ Ruskin ]
Society is infected with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom no public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach; the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight. [ Emerson ]
Among the smaller duties of life, I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due. Reputation is one of the prizes for which men contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, the cheap defense and ornament of nations.
It produces more labor and more talent than twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius, and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and the wisest economy. [ Sydney Smith ]
When we turn away from some duty or some fellow-creature, saying that our hearts are too sick and sore with some great yearning of our own, we may often sever the line on which a Divine message was coming to us. We shut out the man, and we shut out the angel who had sent him on to open the door . . . There is a plan working in our lives; and if we keep our hearts quiet and our eyes open, it all works together;
and, if we don't, it all fights together, and goes on fighting till it comes right, somehow, somewhere. [ Annie Keary ]
The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]
Threescore years and ten! It is the Scriptural statute of limitations. After that, you owe no active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a time-expired man, to use Kipling's military phrase: You have served your term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are not for you, nor any bugle-tail but lights out.
You pay the time-worn duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer - and without prejudice - for they are not legally collectable. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]