quotations about duty
There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to bishops, August 19, 1789
An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.
HERMANN HESSE
Demian
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Miserables
Who gives his life to duty
Will hardships ever find,
And many, many crosses,
And roads that devious wind.
Awaiting him seems Pleasure
At every turn of road;
But Duty stands as sentinel,
With lash and whip to goad.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Duty"
Duty is duty, and an order is an order.
GENE KELLY & FRANK SINATRA
"We Hate to Leave"
To shun one's cross is to make it heavier.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
My own inclinations must not be followed--to duty I sacrifice them.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Adams, April 19, 1764
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
GEORGE PEELE
Polyhymnia
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
It is even a common notion that duty is precisely what we do not like. If there is any doubt, the safe rule is to find out what will be pleasant, and do the opposite! It does often happen that duty asks for sacrifice and demands the hard thing rather than the easy one, but to make pain a test of duty is to turn the world topsy-turvy.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
All the slaves of duty dig their own graves sooner or later.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Even the wild beasts have a duty to perform, for duty is the handmaiden of life. All things that have life have a duty, for life itself is duty. When a man has no obligations, he is dead.
JANICE MANNING & MARSHALL MASTERS
The Kolbrin Bible
It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
THOMAS SZASZ
The Second Sin
One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier.
HELEN KELLER
The Story of My Life
Duty is the goddess of manhood and she demands no mean sacrifice.
JANICE MANNING & MARSHALL MASTERS
The Kolbrin Bible
So the moral law is like a hinge of a pendulum, and obligation is like the ball of the pendulum, and duty is like the arm that rivets the ball to the hinge.
PETER KREEFT
Socrates Meets Kant
The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own. Of course the holders of power conceal this fact from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical with the larger interests of humanity.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"In Praise of Idleness"