duty

Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country.

—Peacock,Thomas Love

I am sure that the immediate abolition of the slave trade is the first, the principal, the most indispensable act of policy, of dutyand of justice the legislature of this country has to take, if it is indeed their wish to secure those important objects† For we continue to this hour a barbarous traffic in slaves, we continue it even yet, in spite of all our great and undeniable pretensions as civilisation.

—Pitt,William known as  theYounger

When people are too comfortable, it is not possible to restrain them within the bounds of their duty† They may be compared to mules who, being accustomed to burdens, are spoilt by rest rather than labour.

—Cardinal Richelieu

There have been many crimes committed in the name of duty and obedienceömany more than in the name of dissent.

—Snow, C(harles) P(ercy), 1st Baron

Whena stupid manisdoing something heisashamedof, he always declares that it is his duty.

—Shaw, George Bernard

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: 'I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my dutyas a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!' And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

—Tennyson

Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

—Gladstone,W(illiam) E(wart)

Most true it is, as a wise man teaches us, that 'doubt of anysort cannot be removed except by Action.'Onwhich ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or in uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: 'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee', which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

—Carlyle,Thomas

The scouts'motto is founded on my initials, it is:, which means, you are always to be in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your.

—Baden-Powell, Robert Stephenson Smyth, 1st Baron

Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our dutyas we understand it.

—Lincoln, Abraham

To learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.

—Book of Common Prayer

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.

—Bethune, Norman

I ain't complainingöit's a duty laid down upon us by Godöbut the Pax Britannia takes a bit of keeping upöwith 'arf the world full of savages and 'arf the other 'arf just getting in the way.

—Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel

The duty of a democracy is to know then what it knows now.

—White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)

The duty of a journalist is the duty of a watchman.

—Stead,WilliamThomas

The duty of an Opposition is to oppose.

—Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer

The primary duty of a serious biographer is to illuminate hissubject'slife work, nottoplay thespy inhisbedroom.

—Toynbee, (Theodore) Philip

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

—Paine,Thomas

The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself† In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.

—Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)

We have been too comfortable and too indulgentömany, perhaps, too selfishöand the stern hand of fatehasscoured ustoan elevationwhere we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks we had forgotten, of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as men and women of thisgeneration last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.

—Lloyd George (of Dwyfor), David, 1st Earl

   To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr Bulstrode rarely shrank from.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities.But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is to me inhuman and indecent and dishonorable.

—Hellman, Lillian Florence

I have not time to say any more, but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen, and let her know her army has had a glorious victory. MonsieurTallard and two other generals are in my coach, and I am following the rest.

—Marlborough,John Churchill, 1st Duke of

If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and damn the consequences. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

—Milner, Alfred, 1st Viscount Milner

Puisque ceux qui avaient le devoir de manier l'e¤  pe¤  e de la France l'ont laisse¤  e tomber brise¤  e, moi, j'ai ramasse¤   le tron c° on du glaive. Since those whose duty it was to wield the sword of Francehave let it fall shattered totheground,Ihavetaken up the broken blade.

—de Gaulle, Charles

  Never let success hide its emptiness from you; achievement its nothingness; toil its desolation. Keep alivetheincentivetopushonfurther, that pain inthesoul that drives us beyond ourselves. Do not look back, and do not dream about the future either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward, your destiny are here and now.

—Hammarskjo«  ld, Dag HjalmarAgne Carl

I wish to say Nelson confides that every man will do his duty.

—Nelson, Horatio,Viscount Nelson

As fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her face was lovely, but her body was as round as a ball.

—Speke,John Hanning

Henry James wrote fiction as if it were a painful duty.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty†our first dutyöa duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificedöis not to be poor.

—Shaw, George Bernard

The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion.

—Ruskin,John

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and bydisclosing them, to makethemthe common property of the nation.

—TheTimes

It is our first duty to serve society, and, after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. Ayouthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

Thank God, I have done my duty.

—Nelson, Horatio,Viscount Nelson

The preservation of health is a duty.Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

—Spencer, Herbert

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

—Sterne, Laurence

Wearepart ofthe communityof Europe, and wemust do our dutyas such.

—of Salisbury

It was my duty to have loved the highest; It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.

—Tennyson

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

   If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.Our interests are eternal, and it is our duty to follow them.

—Palmerston, HenryJohnTemple, 3rd Viscount

We are making politics a spectator sport in which our only duty is to vote somebody into office and then retire to the grandstands.

—Gergen, David Richmond

It is the professional duty of the advertising agent to conceal his artifice.When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks', but when Demosthenes spoke, they said 'Let us march against Philip.'

—Ogilvy, David

These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so faron in their journey of life, bya religious sense of duty and desire to do right.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

'Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice', should be a woman's motto henceforward.

—Stanton, Elizabeth ne¤  e  Cady

The rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind, and†only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

—Rockefeller,John D(avison),Jr

Awake my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run.

—Ken,Thomas

To fight for the right, to abhor the imperfect, the unjust, or the mean, to swerve neither to the right hand nor the left, to care nothing for flattery or applause or odium or abuseöit is so easy to have any of them in Indiaönever to let your enthusiasm be soured or your courage grow dim but to remember that the Almighty has placed your hand on the greatest of his ploughs, in whose furrow the nations of the future are germinating and taking shape, to drive the blade a little forward in your time and to feel that somewhere among those millions you have left, a little justice, or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a springof patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenmentora stirringofduty whereit did not exist beforeöthat is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India.

—Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel

Idonot likebeingmoved:for thewill isexcited;andaction Is a most dangerous thing: I tremble for something factitious, Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process; We are so proneto thesethings with our terrible notions of duty.

—Clough, Arthur Hugh

I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier whotried to dohis dutyas Godgavehimthelight to see that duty.

—MacArthur, Douglas

Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

—Bible (Old Testament)