Honorable Quotes & Sayings

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. — Brenna Yovanoff

Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger. — Sun Tzu

If you are not honorable enough to fight without prejudice, go home. — Lady Gaga

It neither is reason nor in any wise to be suffered that the young king, our master and kinsman, should be in the hands of custody of his mother's kindred, sequestered in great measure from our company and attendance, the which is neither honorable to his majesty nor unto us. — Richard III Of England

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women. — Elizabeth Blackwell

The right honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I think service is honorable, and that was always inculcated in me. — Rachel Maddow

Of all the difficulties in a state, the temper of a true government most felicifies and perpetuates it; too sudden alterations distemper it. Had Nero tuned his kingdom as he did his harp, his harmony had been more honorable, and his reign more prosperous. — Francis Quarles

women were considered instinctual nurses in this generation - the field had received exciting publicity during the Spanish-American War when an Army Nursing Corps had served overseas in the Philippines. Clara Weeks-Shaw, the author of a popular textbook on nursing, promoted the field as "a new activity for women - congenial, honorable and remunerative and with permanent value to them in the common experience of domestic life."3 In readable language, Weeks-Shaw presented nursing as an artful balance between self-reliance and submission. Overall its practices were an extension of maternity, requiring the classic female behaviors of cheerfulness (to the patients) and obedience (to the doctors). "Never leave a doctor alone with a gynecology patient except at his request," went one injunction. — Jean H. Baker

Don't restrain yourself to mundaneness. You're subject to consciousness that makes you more than animalistic. — T.F. Hodge

Right is not this or that doctrine or opinion; right is rational discussion about shared experience between honorable people leading to mutual understanding and tolerance. — Dee Hock

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God, now, is about to establish a kingdom on this earth, based upon brotherhood and peace. And the white man is against brotherhood, and the white man is against peace. — Malcolm X

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice. — Maya Angelou

Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that's their problem. But if you do have a passion, an honest passion, just do it. — Mario Andretti

I'm not saying I'm a paragon of virtue, but it's hard for me not to be honorable. — Wayne Rogers

She'd hurt him, but she'd attempted everything in her power to make things right. She'd shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe even more vividly human than anyone he'd ever known. — Leigh Bardugo

Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town - still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done. — Anne Lamott

O honorable strumpet — William Shakespeare

Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales.

And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor. — Brian W. Aldiss

Jesus, life has its share of honorable thrills if one but keeps one's eyes open! — J.D. Salinger

A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. — Henry Ward Beecher

I'm 40 years old now and I have my friends from five years old up to 40, over 20 lifelong friends I have. And you can't keep that. You can't have that kind of friendship with people for 40 years from childhood friends if you're not an honorable person and if you're not a respectful person. And that's exactly what I am. — Tony Vlachos

There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one main point of honor and a few minor ones. — George Bernard Shaw

How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings? — Polybius

In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong. — Christian Nestell Bovee

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If a mistake is made the honorable thing to do is to own up to it.' Of course I was talking about Levi owning up to his mistakes. But as I finish this book, I realize it applies equally to myself, and to all of us as we try but fail to live up to the standards we know are right. Our inability and unwillingness to keep the standards don't make the standards any less valuable and good. — Bristol Palin

My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester. — Philippe Petit

For now, Lady Queen," he said, "allow us to continue to obey you. But give us honorable instructions, Lady Queen," he said, turning a flushed face to hers. "Ask us to do honorable things, so that we may have the honor of obeying you. — Kristin Cashore

What virtue is it that is born with us?
Much less can honor be ascribed thereto,
Honor is purchased by the deeds we do.
Believe me, Hero, honor is not won,
Until some honorable deed be done.

----From "Hero and Leander, Sestiad I — Christopher Marlowe

The systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have. — Harriet Martineau

Do not chase happiness. Instead, define success for yourself; then go out and live it. Be unapologetic in your commitment and honorable in your behavior. When you live in this manner, happiness chases you. — Steve Maraboli

Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son's teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. "Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books ... But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside," it says. "Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat. — Malala Yousafzai

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write — George Sand

Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided. — Thomas Jefferson

Your weight means nothing when your love is heavy.
Your height means nothing when your love is tall.
Your size means nothing when your love is wide.
Your age means nothing when your love is eternal.
Your status means nothing when your love is honorable.
Your fame means nothing when your love is glorious.
Your wealth means nothing when your love is priceless. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Self respect by definition is a confidence and pride in knowing that your behaviour is both honorable and dignified. Therefore when you harass or vilify another person, you not only disrespect them, but you also. -Respect yourself by respecting others. — Miya Yamanouchi

Behold the complacent salesman retailing the Good and True.
One can even buy a so-called Religion, which is really but common
morality sanctified with flowers and music. Rob the Church of her
accessories and what remains behind? Yet the trusts thrive marvelously,
for the prices are absurdly cheap,
a prayer for a ticket to heaven,
a diploma for an honorable citizenship.Hide yourself under a bushel
quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would
soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. — Okakura Kakuzo

If this is true, how is it no one knows?" "The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to keep the king's secrets. Would you have me break my oath?" Jaime laughed. "Do you think the noble Lord of Winterfell wanted to hear my feeble explanations? Such an honorable man. He only had to look at me to judge me guilty." Jaime lurched to his feet, the water running cold down his chest. "By what right does the wolf judge the lion? By what right?" A violent shiver took him, and he smashed his stump against the rim of the tub as he tried to climb out. — George R R Martin

It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green.Sarah Agnes Prine — Nancy E. Turner

I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables [ ... ] our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle [ ... ] more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave with you. — William Shakespeare

Integrity is the value we set on ourselves. It is a fulfillment of the duty we owe ourselves. An honorable man or woman will personally commit to live up to certain self-imposed expectations. They need no outside check or control. They are honorable in their inner core. — James E. Faust

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap. — Paula McLain

Page 112 The Honorable Schoolboy
He was attended this morning by his wife, a former Bible School teacher from Borneo, a dried- out shrew in bobbed hair and ankle socks who could spot a sin before it was committed. — John Le Carre

The scars are a way of reminding me that the past is real. They are honorable. — Patrick Califia

For this was the age of The Girl. We had come out of the back parlor, out of the kitchen and nursery, we turned our backs upon the blackboards, shed aprons and paper cuffs. A war had freed us and given women a new kind of self-respect.
The adjective poor no longer preceded the once disreputable "working girl". It was honorable, it was jolly, it was even superior to be a "career girl". — Vera Caspary

Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen. — Thomas Jefferson

Are you going to let that four-armed teenie-bopper play dollies with you til you grow and die?" Sai shuddered, "No, that I will not do. I am praying to The Seven for the courage to find a way out. An honorable man would rather die than submit to such indignities." I squeezed his shoulder, "That's the spirit! — Nathan Long

With these meager scraps of Latin and the like, you may perhaps be taken for a scholar, which is honorable and profitable these days. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns it's back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe. — Frederic Bastiat

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them. — Thomas Sowell

An honorable man has a heart for the poor and vulnerable in our society. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

The only men who can turn my blood stream into a condition resembling heavy surf are good-looking heels with characters as intricately unpleasant as the sewers of Paris. With decent and honorable gents, I come all over Platonic. Was ever a woman so perverse and wrongheaded? — Margaret Halsey

Living for a high purpose is as honorable as dying for it. — Carrie Chapman Catt

Smoking is the only honorable form of suicide. — Kurt Vonnegut

Read in the name of your Lord Who created. He created man from a clot.Read and your Lord is Most Honorable, Who taught (to write) with the pen. Taught man what he knew not. — Anonymous

I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me. — Kenneth Langone

Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse. — Jasper Fforde

I urge you to ask yourself just how honorable it is to preside over the abuse and suffering of animals. — Richard Pryor

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for. — Russell Banks

That the most honorable thing in life is not to live it selfishly, but to take risks for those we love. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have devoted my whole life to Physical Culture. I shall devote the rest too for the same. I have seen the degradation in which we are at present. I have travelled extensively and all that I have remarked here is from experience; and my suggestions are to meet the situation. I know they would, if adapted remedy the evil; for, I have studied carefully the position. If we in all seriousness wish to call ourselves the descendants of the mighty Yoddhas of past, if we wish not to cast a blot on the fair name of India, if we wish that India should have a future vying with its glorious past, if we wish that we should gain an honorable and equal place among the peoples of the world it should be our sacred resolve from now to wake up from the sleep as a lion; we should muster muscle and steel the body. For all greatness lies in Culture and 1 should only be too gratified if my scheme could put the youth of the country on the right track to achieve our most cherished Ideals. — Kodi Ramamurthy Naidu

Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop, Not to outsport discretion. — William Shakespeare

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America. — Ambrose Bierce

These days, she would have auctioned off the Milky Way to make his intentions a little less honorable. Her — Marissa Meyer

I was the last, the sole survivor. The most honorable thing a survivor could do was survive. If you stayed on your feet, stayed alive, you were the winner. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I've heard you're the only person who's allowed to put Travis in his place. That's an honorable title. — Jamie McGuire

Because wherever I am today, I still owe it to God and I owe it to two men - the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X and of course, two very special women, my mother and my wife. — Louis Farrakhan

From this point of view, to avoid your strengths and to focus on your weaknesses isn't a sign of diligent humility. It is almost irresponsible. By contrast the most responsible, the most challenging, and, in the sense of being true to yourself, the most honorable thing to do is face up to the strength potential inherent in your talents and then find ways to realize it. — Donald O. Clifton

Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him. — William Morley Punshon

I've heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. "You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God." But that's answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can't avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it. — Timothy Keller

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

Honor your daughters. They are honorable. — Malala Yousafzai

The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years. — Aneurin Bevan

Thus, it does not seem clear (to us) that there is truly a unified research program here, under the name of materialism. The apparent consensus could be something of a mirage, with the only thing holding it together being a denial of the Soul Hypothesis. If so, it begins to look more like a shared assumption than a shared discovery. And of course there can be consensuses based on fashion and the spirit of the age, as well as consensuses based on observation and reason. Even scientists must always be on guard to make sure they are part of the latter rather than the former. The honorable mantle of the scientist conveys no inherent infallibility in this regard. — Mark C. Baker

Fight them with your faith in God, fight them in defense of every free honorable woman and every innocent child, and in defense of the values of manhood and the military honor ... Fight them because with their defeat you will be at the last entrance of the conquest of all conquests. The war will end with ... dignity, glory, and triumph for your people, army, and nation. — Saddam Hussein

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable. — E. O. Wilson

The enlightened rational man is not unlike the title character in Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni": a likeable rake, intelligent and enterprising, free to do as he pleases, outmaneuvering his honorable, tradition-bound adversaries at every step. One cannot begrudge him his liberty and pursuit of happiness, but looming large above him is his fatal flaw: his mind's maturity does not match his freedom. His pursuits are frivolous, tawdry and destructive. And this, we maintain, is the historical moment of our techno-scientific world: like some allegorical alien race in a science fiction story, we have placed broad freedoms and enormous power in the hands of a flawed creature: ourselves. Empirical reason has brought us here, and by its light we will have to find a way forward. — Danko Antolovic

When you wear a tattered cloth to a banquet of the honorable, you look weird — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable. — Booker T. Washington

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other. — Petrarch

I loathed poverty and I would have liked to put my hands on the party who said that poverty is an honorable estate. It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing honorable or fine about it. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Happy the bard, (if that fair name belong
To him that blends no fable with his song)
Whose lines uniting, by an honest art,
The faithful monitors and poets part,
Seek to delight, that they may mend mankind,
And while they captivate, inform the mind.
Still happier, if he till a thankful soil,
And fruit reward his honorable toil:
But happier far who comfort those that wait
To hear plain truth at Judah's hallow'd gate — William Cowper

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker. — George Frisbie Hoar

The wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man (or any person) on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he is worthy to have. — Theodore Roosevelt

In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn't exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of "having a good personality" was not widespread until the twentieth. But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. "The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer," Susman famously wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self. — Susan Cain

I am a hunter. Not merely 'a person who hunts', but someone to whom this ancient, natural and honorable activity is an essential and deeply meaningful part of life. — David Petersen

Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable. — Mortimer Adler

The gifts of an honorable, well-lived life are in those who will miss you once you're gone. — Donald E. Williams Jr.

Strat yearned to imagine her without even the thin white dress, but it would not be honorable, so he prevented himself from having such a fantasy. — Caroline B. Cooney

To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave - that was magical. — Ransom Riggs

If you seek what is honorable, what is good, what is the truth of your life, all the other things you could not imagine come as a matter of course. — Oprah Winfrey

Diminished circumstances had no effect on his sense of what was honorable: after The Spectator sent him a check for a piece it had accepted but was unable to run for a lack of space, he refused to write for the magazine again. — Louis Menand

Selflessness. Humility. Truthfulness. These are the three marks of an honorable man. — Suzy Kassem

War crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, all that is Godlike in man. In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable. — Charles Sumner

There's such cultural rot taking place, such a disintegration throughout our culture. Values, morality, you name it. Standards have been relaxed, and people are not being held to them. People's intentions, if they're said to be good and honorable, that's all that matters. — Rush Limbaugh

So it may well be believed that when I found him taking a complete holiday, with a vast supply of books at command, he had the air of indulging in a literary debauch, if the term may be applied to so honorable an occupation. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

But even the most valiant and honorable men sometimes fail their women. — Isabel Allende