Obligation Quotes - Page 29

• Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor His infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.

  Hannah More

  Heart, Perfection, Selfishness

  Hannah More (1840). “Miscellaneous Works: Tragedies. Miscellaneous poems. Hymns and ballads. Sacred Dramas. Coelebs. Practical piety. Moriana”, p.719

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• If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Betrayal, Names, Voice

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• Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don't know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I've rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party.

  Barbara Walters

  Party, People, Technique

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• Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

  Anne Lamott

  Truth, Moral, Revolutionary

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• What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families.

  Joe Paterno

  Teacher, Nfl, Educator

  Speech to high school coaches, Hershey, Pennsylvania, www.today.com. February 5, 1993.

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• Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Yale, Use

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• But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Intellectual, Religion

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• Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.

  Steve Martin

  Half, Way, Comedy

  Source: www.billboard.com

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• Songwriting ability is a gift. After a while, you come to realize, "I've really been blessed. I can write these things and it makes me happy, and it makes millions of people happy." It's an obligation, it's bigger than you. It's the only true magic I know. It's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat; it's real. It's your soul floating out to theirs.

  Tom Petty

  Real, Blessed, Writing

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• It's a little like packing for a trip. First you lay out everything that might possibly be useful, with no thought about the size of your suitcase. Then, look at your suitcase. In the case of narrative, there's a certain obligation to keep the pace up and have each section or subsection be doing something.

  George Saunders

  Size, Looks, Pace

  Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.

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• Cocktail parties ... are usually not parties at all but mass ceremonials designed to clear up at one great stroke a wealth of obligations.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Party, Cocktails, Cocktail Parties

  Phyllis McGinley (1965). “Sixpence in Her Shoe”

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• Friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion.

  David Hume

  Friendship, Passion, Long

  David Hume (2016). “Essays Moral, Political, Literary: Revision of Great Book”, p.161, VM eBooks

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• We have created a democracy that links us all, and with it come not only opportunities but obligations. There are no gates or walls high enough. There are no bank accounts large enough to buy you and your family and your friends protection from the fear and hunger of those left behind or to isolate you from the consequences of growing social inequities. We are all in this boat together. And the fact that there isn't a hole at your end of the boat doesn't mean you are safe.

  Arianna Huffington

  Wall, Mean, Opportunity

  Arianna Huffington (2004). “Fanatics & Fools: How Politicians are Betraying the American People”, Miramax Books

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• I never talk about what I'm writing about currently, never. It's private work on your own, no need or obligation to talk about it. Writers are made into performers these days, including myself, but there are some instances in which I will not perform.

  Nadine Gordimer

  Writing, Needs, Made

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• Feeble are we? Yes, without God we are nothing. But what, by faith, every man may be, God requires him to be. This is the only Christian idea of duty. Measure obligation by inherent ability! No, my brethren, Christian obligation has a very different measure. It is measured by the power that God will give us, measured by the gifts and possible increments of faith. And what a reckoning will it be for many of us, when Christ summons us to answer before Him under the law, not for what we are, but for what we might have been.

  Horace Bushnell

  Christian, Men, Law

  Horace Bushnell (1876). “Sermons for the New Life”

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• In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very center of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law.

  Horace Bushnell

  Order, Law, Degrees

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• Because I'm a performer I can justify and sometimes sell the things about me that offend and shock the conventional world. I need to live life in the fast lane. I need to do things to excess. I need to go over the edge. I have an obligation to experience the things most people can't experience. The taboos. The things you're not supposed to know or do. That's part of my job. That's why I do it. I would probably do it anyway.

  Elizabeth Ashley

  Jobs, Live Life, People

  Elizabeth Ashley, Ross Firestone (1979). “Actress: Postcards from the Road”, Fawcett Books

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• How extraordinary people are, that they get themselves into such situations where they go on doing what they dislike doing, and have no need or obligation to do, simply because it seems to be expected.

  Margaret Drabble

  People, Expectations, Needs

  Margaret Drabble (2013). “The Middle Ground”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every man has obligations which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions.

  William Whewell

  Men, Desire, Action

  William Whewell (1845). “The Elements of Morality, Including Polity”, p.172

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• The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life.

  Pier Paolo Pasolini

  People, Anxiety, Today

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• War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with. ... But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization.

  Friedrich von Bernhardi

  War, Civilization, Law

  "Germany and the next War" by Friedrich von Bernhardi, (Ch. I), 1911.

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• The freedom to do your own thing ends when you have obligations and responsibilities.

  Lou Holtz

  Responsibility, Ends

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• Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase body count entered our vocabulary. It is an ambiguous phrase, inorganic, even faintly sporty. It distanced us from the painful reality of corpses, of dead, mutilated people.

  Paula Fox

  War, Reality, Thinking

  Paula Fox (2011). “News from the World: Stories and Essays”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If you are in a meeting and you disagree mentally then you have an obligation to disagree verbally!

  Perry Noble

  Meetings, Ifs, Disagree

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• I cannot but take notice of the wonderful love of God to mankind, who, in order to encourage obedience to His laws, has annexed a present as well as a future reward to a good life; and has so interwoven our duty and our happiness together that, while we are discharging our obligations to the one, we are at the same time making the best provision for the other.

  William Melmoth

  Good Life, Order, Law

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