Obliged Quotes - Page 17

• The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Fighting, Tanks, Division

  Kurt Vonnegut (2008). “Armageddon in Retrospect”, p.14, Penguin

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• In a democratic nation, power must be linked with responsibility, and obliged to defend and justify itself within the framework of the general good.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Responsibility, Power, Framework

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• Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Art, Order, Giving

  Mahatma Gandhi (1997). “The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore, 1915-1941”, National Book Trust India

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• With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your later days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable. I cannot... I cannot come to each of you but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.

  George Washington

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Heart

  George Washington (1852). “The life of General Washington: first president of the United States”, p.115

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• Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Hate, Men, Benefits

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• Much as I venerate the name of Newton, I am not obliged to believe that he was infallible. I see ... with regret that he was liable to err, and that his authority has, perhaps, sometimes even retarded the progress of science.

  William P. Young

  Regret, Believe, Names

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• You see then, that Diatribe truly possesses a free choice in her handling of Scriptures, so that words of one and the same type are for her obliged to prove endeavor in one place and freedom in another, exactly as she pleases.

  Martin Luther

  Choices, Scripture, Type

  Martin Luther, Desiderius Erasmus, Ernest Gordon Rupp, Philip Saville Watson (1969). “Luther and Erasmus: Free will and salvation”, Westminster John Knox Press

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• I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some unheard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.

  Sarah Fielding

  Marriage, Blessing, Thinking

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• We are obliged to steal pieces of language, both visual and textual.

  Barbara Kruger

  Pieces, Language, Stealing

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• A picture book is a motorcycle: small, loud, fun, and zippy.
  An easy reader is a chartered bus: obliged to carry a rather dull passenger roster of sanctioned curriculum, plus the baggage of an approved, limited vocabulary. The trick is to design your chartered bus to be as cool and sexy as a motorcycle.

  Mo Willems

  Sexy, Fun, Book

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• You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Fashion, Anger, Thinking

  Octave Mirbeau (1989). “The Torture Garden”, Re-Search Publications

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• The greatest embarrassment of my political career has been that active duties seem to deprive me of time for careful investigation. I seem almost obliged to form conclusions from impressions instead of from study.... I wish that I had more knowledge, more thorough acquaintance, with the matters involved.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Careers, Political, Wish

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1977). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• You are engaging in madness. I feel obliged to accompany you.

  Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Accompany You, Madness, Feels

  Alejandro Jodorowsky (2008). “The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo”, p.183, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words, while he who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word.

  Origen

  Fields, Speak, Should

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• I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income,for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, School, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.50, Graphic Arts Books

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• Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible - and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.

  Rene Magritte

  Believe, Departure, World

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• They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged.

  Damien Rice

  Guilt, Records, Pay

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• A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.

  Albert Camus

  Lying, Three, Used

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.119, Vintage

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• I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

  Garrison Keillor

  Clever, Thinking, Past

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

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• We are obliged to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among all members of the human race.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Race, Unions, Fellowship

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• I was obliged to stand there, holding the leash of this creature for their welcoming publicity shots, implying that this was some kind of image the decided to have of me.

  Barbara Steele

  Publicity, Welcome, Kind

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• If you have a brain, you are obliged to use it.

  Meryl Streep

  Brain, Use, Ifs

  Interview with Wendy Wasserstein, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 7, 2012.

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• We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' is a matter of sense and sensibility. Nevertheless, if we really love others it will not be too hard to like them also.

  Thomas Merton

  Matter, Love One Another, Nevertheless

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The cure for mixed metaphors, I have always found, is for the patient to be obliged to draw a picture of the result.

  Bernard Levin

  Patient, Metaphor, Results

  Bernard Levin (1986). “In these times”, Jonathan Cape

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• A complete transformation seemed to have place in my life overnight. It was quite staggering, and thenceforward visitors and invitations continued to pour in daily until they became a source of grievance to our landlady, who was obliged to engage an extra servant to respond to the battering of powdered footmen on her humble and somewhat flimsy door.

  Lillie Langtry

  Humble, Doors, Visitors

  Lillie Langtry (2000). “The Days I Knew”, p.37, Panoply Publications

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