Irreproachable Quotes & Sayings

Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge
that because she was injured, she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint ... — Jane Austen

Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself. — Nadine Gordimer

The mere title of lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of the public confidence ... The most innocent and irreproachable life cannot guard a lawyer against the hatred of his fellow citizens. — John Quincy Adams

No terror state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. — Donald Rumsfeld

There were a lot of people doing new and interesting things with rock. But I wanted to take it farther than that. My real influence was punk. I must have listened to the first Patti Smith album 300 times. — Glenn Branca

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat', than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. — C.S. Lewis

It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees. — Oscar Wilde

The door of Reverend Verringer's impressive manse is opened by an elderly female with a face like a pine plank; the Reverend is unmarried, and has need of an irreproachable housekeeper. Simon is ushered into the library. It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it. — Margaret Atwood

The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. — Leo Tolstoy

It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. Until you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

This religion so great in miracles, in men holy, pure and irreproachable, in scholars, great witnesses and martyrs, established kings - David - Isaiah, a prince of the blood; so great in knowledge, after displaying all its miracles and all its wisdom, rejects it all and says that it offers neither wisdom nor signs, but only the Cross and folly. — Blaise Pascal

I seek in the reading of my books only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study it is for no other science than that which treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and live well. — Michel De Montaigne

According to the biblical tradition the absence of work
idleness
was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men
the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will. — Leo Tolstoy

It was around the age of 18 when I started to feel like I had learned everything I could learn from being a model - modeling is a really incredible form of expression, but I got into modeling because I loved fashion so much and I really loved photography. — Jaime King

I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people, - that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality. — Leo Tolstoy

Those called by Christ's name should order their lives. They should persevere in prayers and supplications and, in imitation of the angels, have their eyes lifted up to the Master above the heavens, praising and blessing Him with irreproachable conduct, and waiting for His mystical Coming. As the Psalmist says to Him, 'I will sing and will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt Thou come unto me?' (Ps. 101:2). — Gregory Palamas

If the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any unconventional action to - to offensive insinuations - ' She — Edith Wharton

Every person whether Greek or Barbarian who is in training for wisdom, leading a blameless, irreproachable life, chooses neither to commit injustice nor return it unto others, but to avoid the company of busybodies, and hold in contempt the places where they spend their time courts, councils, marketplaces, assemblies in short, every kind of meeting or reunion of thoughtless people ... People such as these, who find their joy in virtue, celebrate a festival their whole life long. — Pierre Hadot

He had always been irreproachable in his conduct, and as a consequence, his capacity for empathy was small. — Eleanor Catton

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature. — Andre Gide

Always remember, the person we're really working for is the person who's restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He's the one we want to impress. — Donna Tartt

Keep in mind that if you take a tour through a hospital and look at every machine with on and off switch that is brought into the service of diagnosing the human condition, that machine is based on principles of physics discovered by a physicist in a machine designed by an engineer. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

AS IN THE REGIMENT HE HAD BEEN NOT MERELY AN IRREPROACHABLE OFFICER but had exceeded his duties, widened the borders of perfection, also as a monk he tried to be perfect, was always industrious, abstemious, submissive, meek, as well as pure both in deed and
in thought and obedient. If many of the demands of life in the monastery which was near the capital, much frequented, did not please him, and were temptations to him, they were all nullified by obedience — Leo Tolstoy

The child watched its disappearance--he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance--we know not what--in which the poor little soul weighs God.

Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint-THE IRREPROACHABLE DOES NOT REPROACH.
(The Man Who Laughs) — Victor Hugo

Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? — Hermann Hesse

In constructing the Coast Guard, Hamilton insisted on rigorous professionalism and irreproachable conduct. He knew that if revenue-cutter captains searched vessels in an overbearing fashion, this high-handed behavior might sap public support, so he urged firmness tempered with restraint. He reminded skippers to "always keep in mind that their countrymen are free men and as such are impatient of everything that bears the least mark of a domineering spirit. [You] will therefore refrain . . . from whatever has the semblance of haughtiness, rudeness, or insult." 34 So masterly was Hamilton's directive about boarding foreign vessels that it was still being applied during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Hamilton — Ron Chernow

Religion (ought to be if it isn't) a great deal more than mere gratification of the instinct for worship linked with the straight-teaching of irreproachable credos. Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development
begun now and ending never. — Anna Julia Cooper

such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class - the military. — Leo Tolstoy

On her eighteenth birthday, my mother had disposed of a man-eating tiger that had ravaged the villages in the hills north of Hanoi. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she raised my father's gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head. — Angela Carter

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy. — Edmund Burke

[On Einstein:] You cannot analyze him, otherwise you will misjudge him. Such a genius should be irreproachable in every respect. But no, nature doesn't behave like this. Where she gives extravagantly, she takes away extravagantly. — Elsa Einstein

They say that Death embellishes its victims and exaggerates their virtues, but in general it is actually life that wronged them. Death, that pious and irreproachable witness, teaches us, in both truth and charity, that in each man there is usually more good than evil. — Marcel Proust