Rectitude Quotes

• Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.

  Date Masamune

  Weakness, Excess, Stiffness

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• The only guide to a man's conscience, the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.

  Winston Churchill

  Memories, Commitment, Shields

  Sir Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill (1965). “Great destiny: sixty years of the memorable events in the life of the man of the century recounted in his own incomparable words”

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• Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Positive, Powerful, Men

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• A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Money, Character, Reputation

  Henry Ward Beecher (1873). “The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.396

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• Never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which you are in doubt.

  Pliny the Younger

  Doubt

  Pliny (the Younger.), William Melmoth (1805). “The Letters of Pliny the Consul”, p.51

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• To have done no man a wrong...to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude-this is to be a man.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Men, Law, Desire

  Orison Swett Marden (2015). “Architects of Fate”, p.11, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude.

  Daniel Hannan

  Moral, Dangerous, Convinced

  FOX "Freedom Watch" with Judge Andrew Napolitano, April 29, 2009.

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• History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

  Winston Churchill

  Memories, Passion, Fate

  Winston Churchill, David Cannadine (1989). “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The mind, conscious of rectitude, laughed to scorn the falsehood of report.

  Ovid

  Mind, Conscious, Scorn

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• I love the idea of rectitude.

  Rob Morrow

  Ideas

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised.

  Herbert Read

  Philosophical, Feelings, Historical

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1971). “Anarchy and Order: Essays in Politics”

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• The mind that's conscious of its rectitude,
  Laughs at the lies of rumor.

  Ovid

  Integrity, Lying, Laughing

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• Then, in the next place, we must know that every being which is endowed with reason, and transgresses its statutes and limitations, is undoubtedly involved in sin by swerving from rectitude and justice.

  Origen

  Justice, Next, Sin

  Origen (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Origen (Annotated Edition)”, p.84, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

  John F. Kerry

  Country, Real, War

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• Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard of rectitude, and be more indebted to the severity of your own judgment of yourself than to all external percepts. Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Integrity, Self, Judgment

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• Let not sleep fall upon thy eyes till thou has thrice reviewed the transactions of the past day. Where have I turned aside from rectitude? What have I been doing? What have I left undone, which I ought to have done?

  Pythagoras

  Fall, Sleep, Eye

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• History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.

  Winston Churchill

  Passion, Past, Echoes

  Sir Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill (1965). “Great destiny: sixty years of the memorable events in the life of the man of the century recounted in his own incomparable words”

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• The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Nature, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.120, Xist Publishing

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• In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Soul, Flight

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.112, Coyote Canyon Press

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• Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth

  Ayn Rand

  Fighting, Pride, Men

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.817, Hamilton Books

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• To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachable of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.

  Walt Whitman

  Art, Animal, Perfect

  Walt Whitman (1949). “The poetry and prose”

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• The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, Allies, Impossible

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “Arguably”, p.15, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• A doctrine-teaching, character-building university, the Brigham Young University is dedicated to the building of character and faith, for character is higher than intellect . . . . We are men of God first, men of letters second, men of science third, and noted men fourth, men of rectitude rather than academic competence. . . . Our academic training must be as impeccable as our lives.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Teaching, Character, Men

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• It is true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains of rectitude; that all beauty and power which men covet are somehow born out of that Alpine district; that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Men, Rose

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.430

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• Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Passion, Voice, Giving

  Thomas Chalmers (1857). “On Natural Theology”, p.327

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