Obligatory Quotes & Sayings

Liam pulled him into his arms, just like he always did.
Ryan smiled and gave his cheek a peck. "You don't have to," he said but he sure wouldn't be pushing the issue. This was exactly what he wanted.
"I do." Liam pushed the door open with his elbow. "It's obligatory for men taking their princes to their castle. — K.A. Merikan

A similar obligatory likeness of George adorned Mrs Glover's bedside table. Trussed in uniform and uncomfortable before a studio backdrop that reminded Sylvie of the Amalfi coast, George Glover no longer resembled a Sistine Adam. Sylvie thought of all the enlisted men who had already undergone the same ritual, a keepsake for mothers and sweethearts, the only photograph that would ever be taken of some of them. 'He could be killed,' Bridget said of her beau, 'and I might forget what he looked like.' Sylvie had plenty of photographs of Hugh. He led a well-documented life. — Kate Atkinson

At best, the relationship between drama critic and playwright is a pretty twiggy affair. When I'm asked whom I write for, after the obligatory, I write only for myself, I realize that I have an imaginary circle of peers - writers and respected or savvy theatre folk, some dramatic writers and some not, some living, some long gone ... Often a writer is aware as he works that a certain critic is going to hate this one ... You don't let what a critic might say worry you or alter your work; it might even add a spark to the gleeful process of creation. — Lanford Wilson

I had no wish to take any determined route on that stroll; I attempted, rather, a maximum latitude of probabilities in order not to wear out expectation with an obligatory anticipation of a single one of them. I was able, within the imperfect limits of possibility, to walk, as they say, at random. I accepted, without any conscious prejudice but that of avoiding the wider avenues and streets, the most obscure invitations of chance. — Jorge Luis Borges

What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset. — Rosa Luxemburg

Apparently, lesbians and gay men who have no desire "to become queer" have failed at a task that is obligatory for them, whether or not they are aware of it. Halperin, like Foucault, in short, is yet another busybody who has an agenda for other people's lives. — Bruce Bawer

American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100
degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad
stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American
percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes,
served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure
spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup
contains more caffeine than four espressos. — Umberto Eco

In contemporary parlance, the term Salafi has come to acquire many different connotations. It has been used to refer to some groups who consider it obligatory to take up arms against all those - non-Muslims and Muslims - who are deemed to challenge or contravene the dictates of the Islamic foundational texts, the Qur'an and the normative example of the Prophet Muhammad (the sunna). At the other end of spectrum, it refers to a politically quietist trend, typified by the Saudi religious establishment, that rejects all beliefs and practices seen as compromising the oneness of God (tawhid) while leaving politics largely to the rulling elite. But the term Salafi is also used for, and by, those who reject the authority of the medieval schools of law and insist on an unmediated access to the foundational texts as the source of all norms. — Muhammad Qasim Zaman

I am confident - and you may call me an idealist and dreamer - I am confident that sooner or later we shall fit these Personal Hours as well into the general formula. Some day these 86,400 seconds will also be on the Table of Hours! I have read and heard many incredible things about the times when people still lived in a free - meaning unorganized and savage - condition. And what seems most incredible to me, is that the state authority of that time - no matter how rudimentary it was - could have allowed people to live without something similar to our Table. Without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever they felt like it ... Some — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau. — Robert Gottlieb

There is a social responsibility to take care of vulnerable people. It seems that a sensible social responsibility is obligatory education, but also decent education, and that is not happening. — Noam Chomsky

Our lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence. — Richard J. Foster

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins. — Thomas Aquinas

Tell me about yourself, Miss Russel."
I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him.
"Why don't you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes? — Laurie R. King

I was so paranoid that my friends wouldn't like me. I went to a very small school where the consequences of bullying were very real. You couldn't just push some nameless face in the hallway because everybody knew each other's families, so there wasn't the obligatory psychotic jackass that tortured everybody. — Kristen Bell

I am not posing these questions only to the world at large. I query us who own Christ as our life. Can God be pleased by the vast and increasing inequities among us? Is he not grieved by our arrogant accumulation, while Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere languish and die? Is it not obligatory upon us to see beyond the nose of our own national interest, so that justice may roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream? Is there not an obligation upon us to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is we want to live in his wonderful peace? — Richard J. Foster

There is no duty more obligatory than the repayment of kindness. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Wonder is like grace, in that it's not a condition we grasp; it grasps us. Wonder is not an obligatory element in the search for truth. We can seek truth without wonder's assistance. But seek is all we'll do; there will be no finding. Unless wonder descends, unlocks us ... truth is unable to enter. Wonder may be the aura of truth, the halo of it. Or something even closer. Wonder may be the caress of truth, touching our very skin. — David James Duncan

It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

By definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never ever obligatory. — R.C. Sproul

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought. — Peter Greenaway

Though it is obligatory to hail our leaders for their sincere dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world, perhaps in an excess of idealism, the more serious scholar/advocates of the mission of "democracy promotion" recognize that there is a "strong line of continuity" running through all administrations: the United States supports democracy if and only if it conforms to U.S. strategic and economic interests. — Noam Chomsky

An astonishing void: official history ignores soccer. Contemporary history texts fail to mention it, even in passing, in countries where soccer has been and continues to be a primordial symbol of collective identity. I play therefore I am: a style of play is a way of being that reveals the unique profile of each community and affirms its right to be different. Tell me how you play and I'll tell you who you are. For many years soccer has been played in different styles, unique expressions of the personality of each people, and the preservation of that diversity seems to me more necessary today than ever before. These are days of obligatory uniformity, in soccer and everything else. Never has the world been so unequal in the opportunities it offers and so equalizing in the habits it imposes: in this end of century world, whoever does not die of hunger dies of boredom. — Eduardo Galeano

I'm not eager at all to present my life out there for public consumption. I like to do one or two films a year and then do what is absolutely obligatory in terms of promoting them. My life outside of films is vital to me. — James Spader

Nor is the Gita a collection of do's and dont's. What is lawful for one may be unlawful for another. What may be permissible at one time, or in one place, may not be so at another time, and in another place. Desire for fruit is the only universal prohibition. Desirelessness is obligatory. — Mahatma Gandhi

I threw in the obligatory "if it be Your will" at the end. That tagline may sound spiritual, but it was less a submission to God's will and more a profession of doubt. If you aren't careful, the will of God can become a cop-out if things don't turn out the way you want. — Mark Batterson

truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. . . . — Friedrich Nietzsche

The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion It is an atheist, nihilistic religion - but it is a religion that is obligatory for all. — Rocco Buttiglione

Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. — Henri Nouwen

To will the obligatory in relation to death is to fall in line with the major immutable cycles of Nature, especially human nature, and to understand that (whether or not there is a purpose or meaning to life or a life of the spirit beyond the life of the body) no one, absolutely no one, escapes being finite and mortal. And knowing this, and then to accept it, to will it, and not to be in an unnecessary state of angst or rebellion or terror over it. — Edwin S. Shneidman

Consciously or not, we feel and internalize what the space tells us about how to work. When you walk into most offices, the space tells you that it's meant for a group of people to work alone. Closed-off desks sprout off of lonely hallways, and in a few obligatory conference rooms a huge table ensures that people are safely separated from one another. — David Kelley

Believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger ... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable. — C.S. Lewis

Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table ... Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke ... let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things. — Thomas Carlyle

It's really important to me to promote worthy causes. But not in a heavy, obligatory, responsibility way. I really admired that as a kid, learning about the 'Elton John AIDS Foundation.' And I was obsessed with The Indigo Girls. And they are the consummate activist group, always reaching out, especially to Native causes and things like that. — Brandi Carlile

We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory. — Walid Jumblatt

They then interviewed us, asking about our love of Qingdao, how we met, why we came. Having learned quickly what they wanted to hear, we answered with the obligatory enthusiasm. Patrick, in especially fine form, waxed the kind of cheesy poetic that put yen-signs in the eyes of the producers. On a seaside boardwalk, for example, they asked him a simple question about the appeal of Qingdao to which he replied with a philosophical metaphor on what he lovingly dubbed, "The Qingdao Mist," a euphemism for the constant polluted haze that enveloped the city. He compared it to the dreamlike state of early love, when all landscapes are a pleasant blur of fuzzy details. I, trying not to laugh, vented my amusement in a wide, photographic smile. — Megan Rich

Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible. — Lewis H. Lapham

Circumcision is obligatory for Jewish-born males - it must be performed on the eighth day after birth and is only postponed in the case of threat to the life or health of the child. Muslim parents also circumcise their male children. — Brad Sherman

Tera said, "All right, who's doing the obligatory thing with the rock?"
"What thing?" Bowe asked.
Mariketa said, "You know, someone drops a rock, and we all silently watch it fall while contemplating the plummet to our deaths?"
Oh, that rock thing. — Kresley Cole

Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of the true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. — William Robertson Smith

I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics. — Charlie Trotter

The mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age. — Lysander Spooner

English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones. — Maureen Johnson

The United States, like any great power, is always going to have an intelligence operation, and some electronic surveillance is obligatory in the modern world. — Jeffrey Toobin

Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature ... Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind. — Alexander Hamilton

In life nothing is taken to its ultimate conclusion, life is a half-way house, a place of obligatory compromise; and, in dealing in logical conclusions, a man steps out of life
or so it would be quite legitimate to argue. — Wyndham Lewis

It has become obligatory to fulfil a function which shall in some way be regarded as useful to the masses ... Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstition without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants. — Karl Jaspers

In a proper Islamic University, fard 'ain knowledge which represents the permanent intellectual and spiritual needs of the human soul
should form the core curriculum, and should be made obligatory to all students. Fard kifayah knowledge
reflecting societal needs and global trends
is not obligatory to all, but must be mastered by and adequate number of Muslims to ensure the proper development of the Community and to safeguard its proper place in world affairs. The fard 'ain knowledge shall include knowledge of the traditional Islamic sciences such as the Arabic language, metaphysics, the Qur'an and Hadith, ethics, the shari'ah sciences, and the history of Islam. Consonant with our position that these fard 'ain sciences are not static but dynamic, they should be continuously studied, analyzed, and applied in relation to the fard kifayah sciences; i.e. the fields of their specialization. — Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

What is especially ironic about these professors' rhetoric of "otherness" and "queerness" is that they are, in fact, by any real-world measure, extremely conservative, lockstep, institutional, careerist creatures. Their sense of identification with their universities, their departments, and their fields of "study", not to mention the obvious way they size one another up by their titles, academic affiliation, and publications, is stifling. So are their endless pious references to Marx, Foucault, and Derrida, which bring to mind the obligatory nods to the Great Leader at some Communist Party congress. — Bruce Bawer

Yesterday morning, I awoke to a brilliant rainbow. At first, I marveled at the sky's pink hues, and I thought how soothing it was. I haven't had that feeling in a long time, that feeling of being at peace with myself or my life. I got out of bed to stand to pull the obligatory curtain further, the color peeking through the leaves of the oaks outside my window. Where I had been seeing grey for quite some time shone now pink. The color is hard to describe accurately. It was pink; but it bordered on a light red. It told me to come look at it. — R.B. O'Brien

A blanket would be a great surface to print my new book on, so you could read it in bed while you're having boring, obligatory sex with your spouse, who's as dry and exciting as a sack of flour. — Jarod Kintz

The more we seek exclusivity in friendship, the more it becomes obligatory and the less likely it is to fulfill the wonderful vision of what true friendship can be. — Harriet Lerner

A familiar example cited by ulama is the law of talion, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", which was obligatory in the religious law of Moses (upon whom be peace), subsequently forbidden by the religious law of Jesus (upon whom be peace) in which "turning the other cheek" was obligatory; and finally both were superseded by the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which permits victims to take retaliation (qisas) for purely intentional physical injuries, but in which it is religiously superior not to retaliate but forgive. — Nuh Ha Mim Keller

A man's 'original and natural right' to make all contracts that are 'intrinsically obligatory,' and to coerce the fulfillment of them, is one of the most valuable and indispensable of all human possessions. — Lysander Spooner

Jenk shook his head as he headed for the rental car counter. He felt his shoulders tightening as he walked away, certain that Izzy wasn't quite ready to be silent or invisible yet. He was halfway there when Izzy shouted, "Jenkins! I wish I could quit yew!"
Of course. The obligatory Brokeback Mountain reference. Jenk flipped Zanella a double bird without bothering to look back. — Suzanne Brockmann

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes of continuous control, namely feedback, the control of performance by the consequences of the act performed. In the hypothetico-deductive scheme the inferences we draw from a hypothesis are, in a sense, its logical output. If they are true, the hypothesis need not be altered, but correction is obligatory if they are false. The continuous feedback from inference to hypothesis is implicit in Whewell's account of scientific method; he would not have dissented from the view that scientific behaviour can be classified as appropriately under cybernetics as under logic. — Peter Medawar

The occupational hazard of being a Playboy Bunny is the aching facial muscles brought on by obligatory smiles. — Germaine Greer

There is a difference between what is wrong and what is evil. Evil is committed when clarity is taken away from what is clearly wrong, allowing wrong to be seen as less wrong, excusable, right, or an obligatory commandment of the Lord God Almighty.
Evil is bad sold as good, wrong sold as right, injustice sold as justice. Like the coat of a virus, a thin veil of right can disguise enormous wrong and confer an ability to infect others. — John Hartung

I've never been very interested in literary narrative in movies, it always seems an obligatory trait and the least interesting of all the things film can do. It forces us to look through the thing instead of at it, it teaches us to ignore our senses and look for meaning outside the immediate world of our experience. — Rick Alverson

They became desperate for an antidote, such as coziness & color. They tried to bury the obligatory white sofas under Thai-silk throw pillows of every rebellious, iridescent shade of Magenta, pink, and tropical green imaginable. But the architect returned, as he always does, like the conscience of a Calvinist, and he lectured them and hectored them and chucked the shimmering little sweet things out. — Tom Wolfe

The Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all. — George Washington

You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist. — Anton Chekhov

To pursue knowledge is obligatory on every believing man and woman. — Ibn Majah

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

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Mixture of assimilation to earlier schemas and adaptation to the actual conditions of the situation is what defines motor intelligence. But and this is where rules come into existence as soon as a balance is established between adaptation and assimilation, the course of conduct adopted becomes crystallized and ritualized. New schemas are even established which the child looks for and retains with care, as though they were obligatory or charged with efficacy. — Jean Piaget

By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective. — Karen Armstrong

I'd meet the women the first night and get the obligatory phone number and then after another couple of days, making them sweat a little, I'd call and be all nervous. They loved that. I'd ask them out and pretend I hardly ever did "this kind of thing', I hadn't been out a lot in London because I didn't really know the scene. — Anonymous

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger's or Whitehead's best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of "obligatory passage point" (Latour's term) in the discussions that follow.
Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made "fewer mistakes" than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress. — Graham Harman

Exercise 1: Guarding the Prayer
Once we are performing the five obligatory prayers with regularity, then it is certainly worth our efforts to begin increasing extra prayers- especially the late-night prayers (tahajjud). Late-night prayer is one of the defining qualities of a salih (righteous) person, also called a wali (friend of Allah). Regarding late-night prayers, Fudayl b. 'Iyyad said that if a man was unable to do them, it was due to his wrong actions during the day. May Allah make us befitting to stand before Him, here and in the hereafter.
Agenda to Change our Condition, Hamza Yusuf & Zaid Shakir, S. 46 — Hamza Yusuf

Do you know, it seems to me that a great deal of nonsense is talked about the dignity of work. Work is a drug that dull people take to avoid the pangs of unmitigated boredom. It has been adorned with fine phrases, because it is a necessity to most men, and men always gild the pill they're obliged to swallow. Work is a sedative. It keeps people quiet and contented. It makes them good material for their leaders. I think the greatest imposture of Christian times is the sanctification of labour. You see, the early Christians were slaves, and it was necessary to show them that their obligatory toil was noble and virtuous. But when all is said and done, a man works to earn his bread and to keep his wife and children; it is a painful necessity, but there is nothing heroic in it. If people choose to put a higher value on the means than on the end, I can only pass with a shrug of the shoulders, and regret the paucity of their intelligence. — W. Somerset Maugham

There is no way to understand the character of the taboo rules, except as a survival from some previous more elaborate cultural background. We know also and as a consequence that any theory which makes the taboo rules ... intelligible just as they are without any reference to their history is necessarily a false theory ... why should we think about [the theories of] analytic moral philosophers such as Moore, Ross, Prichard, Stevenson, Hare and the rest in any different way? ... Why should we think about our modern use of good, right and obligatory in any different way from that in which we think about late eighteenth-century Polynesian uses of taboo? — Alasdair MacIntyre

It's actually quite the contrary. It's time to freak the fuck out, and that's not just acceptable, it's obligatory. The rug has just been pulled out from beneath your feet, and everything you thought you knew with absolute certainty has vanished. Absolute hysteria is just the beginning - you're about to embark on an entire roller coaster of crazy-ass emotions. — Brandi Glanville

The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory. — Thomas Jefferson

Schools are even less efficient in the arrangement of the circumstances which encourage the open-ended, exploratory use of acquired skills, for which I will reserve the term "liberal education." The main reason for this is that school is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling's sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers, which pays off in the doubtful privilege of more such company. Just as skill instruction must be freed from curricular restraints, so must liberal education be dissociated from obligatory attendance. Both skill-learning
and education for inventive and creative behavior can be aided by institutional arrangement, but they are of a different, frequently opposed nature. — Ivan Illich

I despise my own past and that of others. I despise resignation, patience, professional heroism and all the obligatory sentiments. I also despise the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, radio announcers' voices, aerodynamics, the Boy Scouts, the smell of naphtha, the news, and drunks.
I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.
I hope for vibrant love, the impossible, the chimerical.
I dread knowing precisely my own limitations. — Rene Magritte

It's a relief not having to thank Somebody for every mouthful you eat. (I dare say I'm blasphemous; but you'd be, too, if you'd offered as much obligatory thanks as I have.) — Jean Webster

Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

These guys had names for every conceivable drinking situation. They liked to have a little eye-opener to get themselves going in the morning, a midmorning bracer before attempting anything serious, a few modest cocktails at lunch, followed by the obligatory afternoon pick-me-up, which segued neatly right into happy hour and ended with a little one just to help them sleep. For purely medicinal purposes, of course. — G.M. Ford

Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By 'moral', I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should. Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations. — Anonymous

Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do. — Nancy Gibbs

Education
whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself
consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good
that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution. — Simone Weil

The only thing to see is the obligatory third-world Coke billboard, ironic in exact proportion to the distance from its proper American context. This one says COKE - MAKE IT REAL. Just after the Coke sign there is a contrary sign, an indication that irony is not a currency in Liberia. It is worn by a girl who leans against the exit in a T-shirt that says THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD. — Zadie Smith

The American university has become the final stage of the most all encompassing initiation rite the world has ever known. No society in history has been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first which has needed such a dull, protracted, destructive, and expensive initiation into its myth. The contemporary world civilization is also the first one which has found it necessary to rationalize its fundamental initiation ritual in the name of education. We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them. — Ivan Illich

There's a fine line between being truthful and being a complete jerk, I respond and with that I turn my back to the fire. I mutter an obligatory 'goodnight' before falling into sleep. — Celia Mcmahon

Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I detest my past, and anyone else's. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and obligatory beautiful feelings. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, voices making announcements, aerodynamism, boy scouts, the smell of moth balls, events of the moment, and drunken people. — Rene Magritte

Jihad is obligatory for the Muslims. — Abu Bakr

Vichy officials and collaborationists imprisoned 135,000 people (many for little more than their political beliefs), sent 650,000 more to Germany as "guest workers" under an obligatory labor scheme, and, most notoriously, sent 76,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. Less than 3 percent of those Jews survived. — Michael S. Neiberg

Andrew just shrugged, and I fiddled with the napkin in my lap while glancing idly around the restaurant. The obligatory mirrors hung on the walls, and there was one of those fountains with fake lily pads in the entryway. The restaurant was also lit like a mine shaft. I've never understood why dim lighting is supposed to be so romantic. Night vision belongs into a Paris Hilton sex tape - not in a restaurant that could potentially poison me with peanut sauce. — Alicia Thompson

Political correctness is often the attempt to make sentimentality socially obligatory or legally enforceable. — Theodore Dalrymple

How does a person please God? Many religions teach that one must appease God/gods with offerings or superstitious rituals. Yet God's story abolishes our religious to-do lists. Faith in Jesus is God's way for us, and delight in Jesus is what God asks of us. When religious people become followers of Jesus, they are freed from sin and legalistic rituals. The Christians in Galatia were coming under the influence of Jewish Christians who believed that a number of the ceremonial practices of Judaism remained obligatory for followers of Jesus. Paul wrote to the churches in this part of Asia Minor to warn them that they were in reality deserting God and turning to a false gospel. He forcefully proclaimed that people cannot be saved by performing good works in general or by adhering to the Law of Moses in particular. We must come to God trusting in Jesus alone. Only then will we experience freedom. — Anonymous

If you have a sense that your money is somehow, even indirectly, contributing to a cause that you find morally problematic, then it seems somewhere between reasonable and obligatory for you to vote with your dollars. — Blake Mycoskie

The prisoners were handcuffed together, and it was these hands that caught Martha's attention: the working hands, clasped together by broad and gleaming steel, held carefully at waist level, steady against the natural movement of swinging arms - the tender dark flesh cautious against the bite of the metal. These people were being taken to the magistrate for being caught at night after curfew, or forgetting to carry one of the passes which were obligatory, or - but there were a dozen reasons, each as flimsy. — Doris Lessing

It appears to be uncertain whether the journey of Mary with her husband was obligatory or voluntary ... Women were liable to a capitation tax, if this enrolment also involved taxation. But, apart from any legal necessity, it may easily be imagined that at such a moment Mary would desire not to be left alone. The cruel suspicion of which she had been the subject, and which had almost led to the breaking off of her betrothal (Matt. 1: 19) would make her cling all the more to the protection of her husband. — Frederic Farrar

I believe that the phrase 'obligatory reading' is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of 'obligatory pleasure'? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek. 'Obligatory happiness'! [...] If a book bores you, leave it; don't read it because it is famous, don't read it because it is modern, don't read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is 'Paradise Lost' - which is not tedious to me - or 'Don Quixote' - which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don't read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness, so I would advise all possible readers of my last will and testament - which I do not plan to write - I would advise them to read a lot, and not to get intimidated by writers' reputations, to continue to look for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read. — Jorge Luis Borges

The five basic tenets of Islam continue onto the sixth for me. Huquq-ul-Ibaad, or humanitarianism. That it is not proclaimed as obligatory has deeper meaning; as right or wrong are left to human initiatives, its importance would be lost if forced.
-Edhi, A Mirror To The Blind — Tehmina Durrani

What is not forbidden in Sweden, is obligatory. — Milton Friedman

If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it. If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the Legislature as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty. — Alexander Hamilton

If utopia was illusion hypostasized, communism, going still further, will be illusion decreed, imposed: a challenge to the omnipresence of evil, an obligatory optimism. A man will find it hard to accommodate himself to it if he lives, by dint of ordeals and experiments, in the intoxication of disappointment and if, like the author of Genesis, he is reluctant to identify the Age of Gold with the future, with becoming. Not that he scorns the fanatics of "infinite progress" and their efforts to make justice prevail here on earth; but he knows, to his misery, that justice is a material impossibility, a grandiose meaninglessness, the only ideal about which we can declare quite certainly that it will never be realized, and against which nature and society seem to have mobilized all their laws. — Emil Cioran