To have the power to forgive,
Is empire and prerogative,
And 'tis in crowns a nobler gem,
To grant a pardon than condemn. [ Butler ]
Kindness nobler ever than revenge. [ William Shakespeare ]
Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give,
And study how to die, not how to live. [ Lord Lansdowne ]
Patience is nobler motion than any deed. [ Bartol ]
To purchase Heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No - all that's worth a wish - a thought.
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let nobler views engage thy mind. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise.
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays. [ Wordsworth ]
The love of praise
Fills life with fine amenities. Not all
Who live have pleasant tempers, and not all
The gift of gracious manners, or the love
Of nobler motive higher meed than praise. [ J. G. Holland ]
Existence may be borne, and the deep root
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
The camel labors with the heaviest load.
And the wolf dies in silence: Not bestowed
In vain should such examples be; if they.
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear - it is but for a day. [ Byron ]
At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think. [ J. G. Saxe ]
Others import yet nobler art from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. [ Pope ]
Order and system are nobler things than power. [ Ruskin ]
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last.
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
The life of action is nobler than the life of thought. [ Dinah Muloch Craik ]
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty. [ Ruskin ]
A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation robes. [ Pope ]
There are charms made only for distant admiration. No spectacle is nobler than a blaze. [ Johnson ]
A book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers. [ William Shakespeare ]
The heart is like an instrument whose strings steal nobler music from life's many frets. [ Gerald Massey ]
No knowledge is lost, but perfected, and changed for much nobler, sweeter, greater knowledge. [ Baxter ]
No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. [ Carlyle ]
Rank exists in the moral world also. Commoner natures pay with what they do: nobler, with what they are. [ Johann C. F. Von Schiller ]
No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. [ Seneca ]
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 ]
Men will always act according to their passions. Therefore the best government is that which inspires the nobler passions and destroys the meaner. [ Jacobi ]
The true strength of every human soul is to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon by as many inferior as it can reach. [ John Ruskin ]
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, yet, with my nobler reason, against my fury do I take part; the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance. [ William Shakespeare ]
There are some races more cultured and advanced and ennobled by education than others; but there are no races nobler than others. All are equally destined for freedom. [ Alexander von Humboldt ]
He who does not respect confidence, will never find happiness in his path. The belief in virtue vanishes from his heart, the source of nobler actions becomes extinct in him. [ Auffenberg ]
The culture of flowers is one of the few pleasures that improves alike the mind and the heart, and makes every true lover of those beautiful creations of Infinite Love, wiser, purer, and nobler. [ J. Vick ]
It is the work of fancy to enlarge, but of judgment to shorten and contract; and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination. [ South ]
Graves, the dashes in the punctuation of our lives. To the Christian they are but the place at which he gathers breath for a nobler sentence. To Christ, the grave was but the hyphen between man and God, for He was God-man. [ Duffield ]
There is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of spirit, a sickness of heart and mind, a bitter longing to lie down and die. [ Miss M. E. Braddon ]
Almost every great soul that has led forward, or lifted up the race, has been furnished for each nobler deed, and inspired with each patriotic and holy aspiration, by the retiring fortitude of some Spartan - some Christian mother. [ C. J. White ]
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature. [ Guizot ]
Fetch a spray from the wood and place it on your mantel-shelf, and your household ornaments will seem plebeian beside its nobler fashion and bearing. It will wave superior there, as if used to a more refined and polished circle. It has a salute and response to all your enthusiasm and heroism. [ Thoreau ]