Obliged Quotes - Page 6

• And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.

  Julian Barnes

  Love You, Order, Names

  Julian Barnes (2010). “Arthur & George”, p.308, Random House

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• We must do everything we are obliged to do; give without reckoning, practice virtue whenever opportunity offers, constantly overcome ourselves, prove our love by all the little acts of tenderness and consideration we can muster. In a word, we must produce all the good works that lie within our strength - out of love for God.

  Therese of Lisieux

  God, Lying, Opportunity

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• I am convinced by a sad experience that it is natural to avoid those to whom we have been too much obliged, and that uncommon generosity causes neglect rather than gratitude.

  Heloise

  Gratitude, Generosity, Guilt

  Abelard, Heloise “Abelard letters”, Lulu.com

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• What would become of the world without the Devil? Under all the different systems of religion that have guided or misguided the world for the last six thousand years, the Devil has been the grand scapegoat. He has had to bear the blame of every thing that has gone wrong. All the evil that gets committed is laid to his door, and he has, besides, the credit of hindering all the good that has never got done at all. If mankind were not thus one and all victims to the Devil, what an irredeemable set of scoundrels they would be obliged to confess themselves!

  Geraldine Jewsbury

  Doors, Years, Evil

  Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1845). “Zoe: The History of Two Lives”, p.90

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• War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Peace, War, Men

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• When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

  Honore de Balzac

  Uncles, Niece, Palaces

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• Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Hero, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.406

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• How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.

  John Keats

  Self, Mad, Imagination

  John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters of John Keats”

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• But you are not under a system similar to that by which the Jews were obliged to pay tithes to the priests. If there were any such rule laid down in the Gospel, it would destroy the beauty of spontaneous giving and take away all the bloom from the fruit of your liberality! There is no law to tell me what I should give my father on his birthday. There is no rule laid down in any law book to decide what present a husband should give to his wife, nor what token of affection we should bestow upon others whom we love. No, the gift must be a free one, or it has lost all its sweetness.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Husband, Father, Book

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• It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Powerful, Grief, Ambition

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• No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wise, Country, Men

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.149

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• Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Greatness, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.50

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• Nature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Art, Nature, Husband

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• Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Duty, Grain

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• The great conductor is always a despot by temperament and intractable in his ways. ... The artist is obliged to keep his laughter and tears to himself. If they want to emerge, in spite of himself, then he must hide them or unleash them in someone else.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Laughter, Artist

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• The worst part about prostitution is that you're obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That's the worst part of it: that what you're selling is your human dignity. Not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement - in becoming a bought person.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, Agreement, Humanity

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• Writers sometimes talk as though they were the only friends of civilization. This is their conceit. But they have special powers to serve -- or to corrupt -- civilization, and are obliged to use them.

  Storm Jameson

  Civilization, Special, Use

  Storm Jameson (2011). “The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell”, p.131, A&C Black

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• Base natures ever judge a thing above them, and hate a power they are too much obliged to.

  Thomas Otway

  Hate, Judging, Too Much

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• Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

  Clarence Darrow

  Mean, Fighting, Men

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “Crime: Its Cause and Treatment”, p.83, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• moral indignation is a pleasure, often the only pleasure, in many lives. It's also one of the few pleasures people feel obliged to force on other people.

  Barbara Holland

  People, Morality, Pleasure

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• How do you think it would feel to be obliged to ask for a seat-belt extender on an airplane? For the unfashionably bulgy, life is a series of small humiliations.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Airplane, Thinking, Weight

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

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• we can't know a road until we travel it. Hearing about it is not enough. We are obliged to travel over it.

  Virginia Cary Hudson

  Travel, Experience, Hearing

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• The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

  Susan Sontag

  History, Fiction, Crowds

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.92, Macmillan

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• I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

  Charles Lamb

  Music, Pain, Italian

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.193, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication- after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

  Thomas Paine

  Believe, Communication, Religion

  Thomas Paine (1861). “The Age of Reason, etc”, p.2

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