Duties

Famous quotes containing the word duties:

    You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I
    Return those duties back as are right fit,
    Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a “taxing- machine;” to the contented, a “machine for securing property.” Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.
    Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)

    Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)