Noble Man Quotes

• Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Ambition, Men, Way

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.77

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• It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.

  Plutarch

  Integrity, Men, Risk

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• It takes a noble man to plant a seed for a tree that will someday give shade to people he may never meet.

  D. Elton Trueblood

  Men, People, Giving

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  There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Lying, Men, Self

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• To love is to be selfless. To be selfless is to be fearless. To be fearless is to strip your enemies of their greatest weapon. Even if they break our bodies and drain our blood, we are unvanquished. Our goal was never to live; our goal is to love. It is the goal of all truly noble men and women. Give all that can be given. Give even your life itself.

  N.D. Wilson

  Love Is, Men, Selfless Giving

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• What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

  William Shakespeare

  Beauty, Moving, Angel

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [316]

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• Low class men desire wealth;middle class men both wealth and respect; but the noble, honour only; hence honour is the noble man's true wealth.

  Chanakya

  Wisdom, Men, Class

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• Noble man remembers nothing good he did for others.

  Ali-Shir Nava'i

  Wisdom, Men, Remember

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• The noble man is only God's image.

  Johann Ludwig Tieck

  Men, Noble

  "Genoveva" by Johann Ludwig Tieck,

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• A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man, by one lower than himself.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Ambition, Mean, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.77

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• For my own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Glad, My Own

  William Shakespeare, Nahum Tate, Mrs. Inchbald (1808). “King Lear: A Tragedy in Five Acts”

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• A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Gentle, Noble

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• The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Powerful, Men, Silence

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2013). “The Selected Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.664, Simon and Schuster

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• Common men should esteem learning as silver, noble men prize it as gold, and princes as jewels.

  Pope Pius II

  Learning, Men, Jewels

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• Science only means knowledge; and for [Greek] ancients it did only mean knowledge. Thus the favorite science of the Greeks was Astronomy, because it was as abstract as Algebra. ... We may say that the great Greek ideal was to have no use for useful things. The Slave was he who learned useful things; the Freeman was he who learned useless things. This still remains the ideal of many noble men of science, in the sense they do desire truth as the great Greeks desired it; and their attitude is an external protest against vulgarity of utilitarianism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Attitude, Learning, Mean

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• Each say following another, either hastening or putting off our death--what pleasure does it bring? I count that man worthless whois cheered by empty hopes. No, a noble man must either live or die well.

  Sophocles

  Hope, Men, Doe

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• Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. 'To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.'

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Rights, Order

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!--and such reverence is a bridge to love.--For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture "the enemy" as the man of ressentiment conceives him--and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy," "the Evil One," and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a "good one"--himself!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Bridges, Evil

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.475, Modern Library

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• The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth century ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth.

  Eric Hoffer

  Men, Atrocities Committed, Society

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• It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better.

  Howard Pyle

  Men, Self, Long Ago

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• Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Life, Mean, Men

  Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann, Ben Raeburn (1960). “Frank Lloyd Wright: writings and buildings”

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• Count not the cost of honour to the dead!The tribute that a mighty nation paysTo those who loved her well in former daysMeans more than gratitude for glories fled;For every noble man that she hath bred,Lives in the bronze and marble that we raise,Immortalised by art's immortal praise,To lead our sons as he our fathers led.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Gratitude, Art, Father

  Henry Van Dyke (2018). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”, p.158, BoD – Books on Demand

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• A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Inspirational, Ambition, Mean

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• Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.

  Moliere

  Heart, Men, Honour

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• I hope I'm remembered as the king of the world, the noble man who united all the nations of the earth. But that probably won't happen.

  Macaulay Culkin

  Kings, Men, World

  Macaulay Culkin (2006). “Junior”, Miramax Books

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