Obligation Quotes - Page 28

• I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and save the world. You sent money to the Red Cross, you registered people to vote, you marched in rallies, stood in vigils, picked up litter.

  Anne Lamott

  Believe, People, Parent

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, p.9, Anchor

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• To make a covenant with the Lord to always keep His commandments is a serious obligation, and to renew that covenant by partaking of the sacrament is equally serious. The solemn moments of thought while the sacrament is being served have great significance. They are moments of self-examination, introspection, self-discernment...a time to reflect and to resolve.

  Howard W. Hunter

  Self, Examination, Covenant

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• Not only do we have a right to be happy, we have an obligation to be happy because our happiness has an effect on everyone around us.

  Dennis Prager

  Effects

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hands, Right Thing

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• If someone doesn't fit in your company, you have an obligation to get rid of them, because you're holding them back from excelling elsewhere.

  Barbara Corcoran

  Fit, Company, Elsewhere

  Twitter post from Mar 18, 2016

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• I think marriage is a boring and fault-ridden contractual obligation.

  Henry Rollins

  Thinking, Faults, Boring

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• You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

  Rahsaan Roland Kirk

  Squares, New Orleans, Hips

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• Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.

  George Eliot

  Selfish, Science, Company

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.483, Penguin

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• That long (Canadian) frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations, as an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

  Winston Churchill

  Country, Ocean, Long

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• As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Venture, Able

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.37

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• One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful.

  Edith Wharton

  Beautiful, Art, Firsts

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.6879, Delphi Classics

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• Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Atheist, Men, Atheism

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.87

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• It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few woman are strong enough to understand and to play this role.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Strong, Exercise

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• The possession of wealth is, as it were, prepayment, and involves an obligation of honor to the doing of correspondent work.

  George MacDonald

  Honor, Wealth, Possession

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• Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity, for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

  George Canning

  Party, Exercise, Practice

  George Canning (1842). “Select Speeches of the Right Honourable George Canning: With a Preliminary Biographical Sketch, and an Appendix, of Extracts from His Writings and Speeches”, p.533

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• Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future. Obviously, we cannot develop beyond a certain point unless other nations develop, too.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  United States, World, Certain

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• I am furious at all the letters to answer, when all I want to do is think and write poems. ... I long for open time, with no obligations except toward the inner world and what is going on there.

  May Sarton

  Writing, Thinking, Long

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.90, Open Road Media

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• Every acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Gratitude, Thinking, Debt

  Oliver Goldsmith (1841). “Goldsmith's miscellaneous works”

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• Everything has two handles; the one soft and manageable, the other such as will not endure to be touched. If then your brother do you an injury, do not take it by the hot hard handle, by representing to yourself all the aggravating circumstances of the fact; but look rather on the soft side, and extenuate it as much as is possible, by considering the nearness of the relation, and the long friendship and familiarity between you--obligations to kindness which a single provocation ought not to dissolve. And thus you will take the accident by its manageable handle.

  Epictetus

  Brother, Kindness, Two

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• the obligation to express gratitude deepens with procrastination. The longer you wait, the more effusive must be the thanks.

  Judith Martin

  Gratitude, Procrastination, Waiting

  Judith Martin (1996). “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization: From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and Other Lapses in Civility”, Crown

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• It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

  Blaise Pascal

  Gratitude, Love Is, Allies

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• We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

  Agnes Repplier

  Height, Moral, Scales

  Agnes Repplier (2015). “Americans and Others”, p.98, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

  Rebecca West

  Justice, Legal System, Steps

  Rebecca West (2005). “Woman as Artist and Thinker”, p.40, iUniverse

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• The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.

  Simone Weil

  Rights, Relation, Duty

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.2, Routledge

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• I have learned something about the job of being the President's wife. She is not chosen by anyone except her husband and she really has no obligations except to him.

  Lady Bird Johnson

  Jobs, Husband, Wife

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