Noble Quotes - Page 15

• Why you exist, says Nietzsche with Søren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can.

  Georg Brandes

  Giving, Goal, Trying

  Georg Brandes (1914). “Friedrich Nietzsche. (Translated by A. G. Chater.) [Translations of "Friedrich Nietzsche. En Afhandling om aristokratisk Radikalisme," extracted from "Fremmede Personligheder,” “Friedrich Nietzsche's sidste aandeligt virksomme Aar," published in "Tilskueren," 1899, and two short articles extracted from "Skikkelser og Tanker." ]”, CreateSpace

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• But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. ... We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.

  Georg Brandes

  Powerful, Voice, Creating

  "An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism" by Georg Brandes, 1889.

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• I believe that the core battle of our day is the battle to defend the inherent dignity of each and every person, the inherent beauty of each and every soul to be respected and treated as beautiful, unique, and sacred child of a loving God. No matter where they are, no matter what they look like, no matter what their status, each is noble and should be treated as such. The beauty of the individual is truth and we know it in our hearts.

  Sam Brownback

  Beautiful, Children, Believe

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• One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him.

  James Russell Lowell

  Character, Break Through, Style

  James Russell Lowell (2015). “Abraham Lincoln”, p.22, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Rivers, Heaven

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.166

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• I could never figure out or probably did not take the trouble to figure out what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

  Eric Hoffer

  Philosophical, Numbers, People

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• When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse .

  Eric Hoffer

  Dream, Lying, Wrath

  Eric Hoffer (2011). “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• Silence is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and most expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind.

  Joseph Addison

  Silence, Sublime, Mind

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1831). “Tatler and Guardian”, p.251

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• The Hindu religion appears ... as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Real, Unseen, Details

  Sri Aurobindo (1970). “Letters on Yoga”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• A remorseful change of mind renders even a noble action base, whereas the determination which is grounded on knowledge and reason cannot change even if its actions fail.

  Plutarch

  Determination, Mind, Action

  Plutarch (2012). “Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Complete”, p.333, Simon and Schuster

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• Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose.

  Herbert Spencer

  Feelings, Doe, Culture

  Herbert Spencer (1910). “Works”

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• Minerva save us from the cloying syrup of coercive compassion! What feminism does not need, it seems to me, is an endless recycling of Doris Day Fifties clichés about noble womanhood.

  Camille Paglia

  Compassion, Feminism, Doe

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.84, Vintage

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• Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life , given to search for truthand to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas .

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Ideas, Goal, People

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• A noble mind disdains to hide his head, And let his foes triumph in his overthrow.

  Robert Greene

  Mind, Triumph, Foe

  Robert Greene, Alexander Dyce (1831). “Alphonsus, king of Arragon. James the Fourth. George-a-Greene, the pinner of Wakefield. Specimen of the History of George-a-Greene. Ballad of the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield. Poems”, p.10

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• True loyalty consists not in bowing the knee to earthly greatness, or in heroic deeds to "gild the kingly knave, or garnish out the fool," but in noble, generous acts of honest purpose, where truth, honor, and virtue, and a nation's welfare, are dearer than life.

  James Ellis

  Loyalty, Greatness, Heroic Deeds

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• I have likewise made many 'skies' and effects - for I wish it could be said of me as Fuselli says of Rembrandt, 'he followed nature in her calmest abodes and could pluck a flower on every hedge - yet he was born to cast a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature'... We have had noble clouds & effects of light & dark & color.

  John Constable

  Flower, Eye, Dark

  John Constable (1968). “John Constable's Correspondence”

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• The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Employment, Leisure

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.

  Anthony Trollope

  Devil, May, Should

  Anthony Trollope (2014). “Phineas Finn: The Irish Member”, p.578, Simon and Schuster

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• If one doth act in friendly wise, With no evil thought toward any single creature, And in so doing becometh proper, And if he have compassion in his soul Toward all living beings--this noble one Doth acquire abundant Virtue.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Compassion, Evil

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• Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.

  John Calvin

  Children, Differences, Scripture

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.57, Baker Books

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• If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

  Thomas Guthrie

  Jesus, Office, World

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 128, 1895.

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• Harvey sought for truth in Truth's own book- Creation - which by God himself was writ;And wisely thought 'twas fitNot to read comments only upon it,But on th' original itself to look.Methinks in Art's great circle others standLock'd up together hand in hand:Every one leads as he is led,The same bare path they tread,A dance like that of Fairies, a fantastic round,With neither change of motion nor of ground.Had Harvey to this road confined his wit,His noble circle of the blood had been untrodden yet.

  William Harvey

  Art, Book, Blood

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• The important thing is not the planning of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but rather the examination of their linguistic function.

  Theodor Adorno

  Important, Nouns, Examination

  Theodor W. Adorno (1973). “The Jargon of Authenticity”, p.6, Northwestern University Press

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• To those privileged ones -- among whom we count ourselves -- the high-resounding "isms" to which their contemporaries ask them to give their allegiance are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success, if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious, and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail.

  Savitri Devi

  Men, Numbers, Giving

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• Noble men in the quiet of morning hear Indians singing the continent's violent requiem.

  William Dunbar

  Morning, Men, Noble Man

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