#Duty Quotes

“Every subject's duty is the Kings, but every subject's soul is his own.”

“What e'er thou art, act well thy part.”

“Give obedience where 'tis truly owed.”

“The due of honor in no point omit.”

“Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather have eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.”

“I profess not talking: only this, Let each man do his best.”

“My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education. My life and education both do learn me How to respect you. You are the lord of my duty, I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband, And so much duty as my mother showed To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor my lord.”

“Be just, and fear not.Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,Thy God's and truth's.”

“Mine honor is my life, both grow in one. Take honor from me, and my life is done. Then, dear my liege, mine honor let me try; In that I live, and for that I will die.”

“We do what we must, and call it by the best names.”

“I thank you all and here dismiss you all, and to the love and favor of my country commit myself, my person, and the cause.”

“Freedom is not the right to do as you please, but the liberty to do as you should.”

“Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.”

“Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.”

“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,And for thy maintenance commits his bodyTo painful labour both by sea and land,To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;And craves no other tribute at thy handsBut love, fair looks and true obedience;Too little payment for so great a debt.”

“Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

“Wherever the truth is injured, defend it.”

“On bravely through the sunshine and the showers!Time hath his work to do, and we have ours.”

“Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.”

“Listing your personal milestones is like storing a pocketful of sunshine for a rainy day. Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required.”

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope.”

“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”

“Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future...But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other side, I were not to convey the true impression, that this great nation is getting into its war stride.”

“The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.”

“If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for power or office. I have had an ample share of both. If I stay it is because I have a feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have an influence about what I care about above all else, the building of a sure and lasting peace.”

“There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

“There is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. From the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.”

“Do not criticize your government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors”

“What wouldst thou do, old man?Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speakWhen power to flattery bows?”

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”

“Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.”

“Let it be your pride to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are.”

“I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

“No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.”

“O good old man, how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed! Thou art not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion, And having that do choke their service up Even with the having. . . .”

“In right and service to their noble country.”

“The roll of honor consists of the names of meant who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.”

“Character, my friends, is a byproduct. It is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.”

“There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.”

“I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.”

“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

“The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand, and to know that in performing it we are serving our country.”

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”

“I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.”

“There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.”

“In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.”