Being Honourable Quotes & Sayings

Upon Mrs Scorton's reappearance, she found herself confronted, not by the fool of his family, but by the Honourable Frederick Standen, a Pink of the Pinks, who knew to a nicety how to blend courtesy with hauteur, and who informed her, with exquisite politeness, that he rather fancied his cousin was tired, and would like to be taken home. One of the uninvited guests, entering the box in Eliza's wake, ventured on a warm sally, found himself being inspected from head to foot through a quizzing-glass, and stammered an apology. — Georgette Heyer

We may not need God to tell us where the world came from, but we need God to be able to live moral lives and for there to be morality in the first place. — Rebecca Goldstein

Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honourable way - the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason - and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all. In its essence, honour is the art of being humble. — Gregory David Roberts

The inimitable stories of Tong-King never have any real ending, and this one, being in his most elevated style, has even less end than most of them. But the whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness, and the two characters are both of noble birth. — Ernest Bramah

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile. — David Steinberg

Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's "uses base" for the sake of money; but this is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler. — Plato

My characters populate a big, vibrant world. Sometimes they rub shoulders. Sometimes they don't. — Julie Kenner

I keep a pretty low profile. I live in Culver City with some roommates. I don't do the whole 'Hollywood' thing. — Cory Monteith

We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy own, no gift peculiarly thine, that thou mayest feel as thine own, have as thine own, possess as thine own, the seat, the form, the gifts which thou thyself shalt desire. A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou will fix the limits of nature for thyself. I have placed thee at the centre of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honourable, art the molder and maker of thyself. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

This is going to be about zombies. I'm calling it now. — Brandon Sanderson

And remember, my son, that it is better for the soldier to smell of gunpowder than of civet, and that if old age should come upon you in this honourable calling, though you may be covered with wounds and crippled and lame, it will not come upon you without honour, and that such as poverty cannot lessen; especially now that provisions are being made for supporting and relieving old and disabled soldiers; for it is not right to deal with them after the fashion of those who set free and get rid of their black slaves when they are old and useless, and, turning them out of their houses under the pretence of making them free, make them slaves to hunger, from which they cannot expect to be released except by death. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Not knowing what's happening, from script to script, as an actor and as a character, lends itself to the same tension and anxiety of not knowing what's happening. — Matthew Davis

yet I have ever thought the knowledge of kindred and genealogies of the ancient families of a country a matter so far from contempt, that it deserveth highest praise. Herein consisteth a part of the knowledge of a man's own selfe. It is a great spurr to vertue to look back on the worth of our line. In this is the memory of the dead preserved with the living, being more firm and honourable than any epitaph. The living know that band which tyeth them to others. By this man is distinguished from the reasonless creatures, and the noble of men from the base sort. For it often falleth out (though we cannot tell how) for the most part, that generositie — Katherine Thomson

For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich. — Plutarch

They have done their worst, and continued to deny me even the privileges accorded to the common herd ... but I am sustained by the consciousness of my imputed 'crime' being an honourable one — Michael Davitt

Be near me when my light is low and be near me when my heart is sick... — Andrew O'Hagan

They then praise me for traits I don't think I even have. Amiable presence? Hah! Lady of legends? OK, that sounds pretty cool. But righteous? Honourable? Composed? Did they just grab a dictionary and choose a bunch of positive words? And calling me polite, the girl who talks with her mouth full, the girl who speaks her mind at the worst moments, the girl who has no intention of hiding when she's bored, annoyed or offended in order to respect the other person? Well, they'll soon realise that polite was far from the truth. I'm not exactly impolite towards them, but I hate phoneys, and I have being phoney, too. Somehow, though, my upfront comments only spawn more of these exaggerated compliments: 'What a sincere girl!' and 'We need a Pulsar of such boldness. — Giselle Simlett

So that's how it is. Today's the big day." Beckett nodded with a wry smile.
He knows.
He was naked now. "How you want me, baby? Execution style? Or you want to look me in the eyes? — Debra Anastasia

I was thinking about honour. It's a thing that changes doesn't it? I mean, a hundred and fifty years ago we would have had to fight if challenged. Now we'd laugh. There must have been a time when it was rather an awkward question."
"Yes. Moral theologians were never able to stop dueling
it took democracy to do that."
"And in the next war, when we are completely democratic, I expect that it will be quite honourable for officers to leave their men behind. It'll be laid down in King's Regulations as their duty
to keep a cadre going to train new men to take the place of prisoners."
"Perhaps men wouldn't take too kindly to being trained by deserters."
"Don't you think that they'd respect them more for being fly? I reckon our trouble is that we're in the awkward stage
like a man challenged to a duel a hundred years ago. — Evelyn Waugh

I adore Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh, but more because they were good actresses. That's what makes me interested in them, that they didn't present themselves as idols; they were just doing their jobs. — Imelda Staunton

Two weeks ago we couldn't pronounce your name, but you were in the lead in a film that made millions, so we're sending you all these scripts. — Cillian Murphy

Trees make man happy in thousands of different ways; in return, man hurts the trees in thousands of different ways! What an honourable being man is! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

That's the last time you're going to kiss me," I warned when it ended.
He smiled knowingly, and in his eyes, I could see his own memories of that night. "So you say. — Richelle Mead

Marriage is honourable, as you say; and if so, wherefore should Cuckoldom be a Discredit, being deriv'd from so honourable a Root? — William Congreve

I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. It will come to pass that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honourable shame. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Some think that even the ancients who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts of the Gods, had a similar view of nature; for they made the Oceanus and Tethys the parents of creation, and described the oath of the Gods as being by water, to which they give the name of Styx; for what is oldest is most honourable, and the most honourable thing is that by which one swears — Mary Hunter Austin

Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world. — Kathryn Schulz

When I'm 75 years old, I want to say that I chased my dream. I didn't let other people's opinions dictate what I have in my book of my life. — Thomas Jones

Matilda longed for her parents to be good and loving and understanding and honourable and intelligent. The fact that they were none of these things was something she had to put up with. It was not easy to do so. But the new game she had invented of punishing one or both of them each time they were beastly to her made her life more or less bearable. Being very small and very young, the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was brain-power. For sheer cleverness she could run rings around them all. But the fact remained that any five-year-old girl in any family was always obliged to do as she was told, however asinine the orders might be. — Roald Dahl

Staring into thin air at those
things only cats can see (Doctro Sleep) — Stephen King