Ignoble Quotes - Page 3

• All flesh is grass. and all its glory fades
  Like the fair flower dishevell'd in the wind;
  Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;
  The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
  And we that worship him, ignoble graves.

  William Cowper

  Death, Dream, Flower

  William Cowper (1856). “The task, Table talk, and other poems: With critical observations of various authors on his genius and character, and notes, critical and illustrative”, p.186

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• The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Employment, Noble

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Desire, Criminals, Inconsistent

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• It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Pride, Suffering, Quality

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• Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave.

  Alexander Pope

  Envy, Brave, Mind

  Alexander Pope (1804). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope”, p.71

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• All men are almost led to believe not of proof, but by attraction. This way is base, ignoble, and irrelevant; every one therefore disavows it. Each one professes to believe and even to love
  nothing but what he knows to be worthy of belief and love.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Men, And Love

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.406, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The malignity that never forgets or forgives is found only in base and ignoble natures, whose aims are selfish, and whose means are indirect, cowardly, and treacherous.

  George Stillman Hillard

  Selfish, Mean, Forgiving

  George Stillman Hillard “Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-General, U. S. Army”, Charles River Editors

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• He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime.

  William Manchester

  Men, Sublime, Noble

  William Manchester (1979). “American Caesar”

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• King Henry: But what a point, my lord, your falcon made, And what a pitch she flew above the rest! To see how God in all his creatures works! Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high. Suffolk: No marvel, an it like your majesty, My lord protectors hawks do tower so well; They know their masters loves to be aloft, And bears his thoughts above his falcon's pitch. Gloucester: My lord, 'tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

  William Shakespeare

  Kings, Men, Climbing

  William Shakespeare (1838). “Complete Works: With Dr. Johnson's Preface, a Glossary, and an Account of Each Play, and a Memoir of the Author by William Harness”, p.478

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• It is not races but individuals that are noble and courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable. The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high.

  Edwin Way Teale

  Philosophical, Race, Class

  Edwin Way Teale (1987). “Circle of the seasons: the journal of a naturalist's year”, Olympic Marketing Corp

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• It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. . . . The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Knowing, Historical

  Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun, The Impossible Mencken, June 29, 1925.

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• Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Dwelling, People, Tools

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• No matter what the cause, even though it be to conquer with tanks and planes and modern artillery some defenseless black population, there will be no lack of poets and preachers and essayists and philosophers to invent the necessary reasons and gild the infamy with righteousness. To this righteousness there is, of course, never an adequate reply. Thus a war to end poverty becomes an unanswerable enterprise. For who can decently be for poverty? To even debate whether the war will end poverty becomes an exhibition of ugly pragmatism and the sign of an ignoble mind.

  John T. Flynn

  War, Black, Mind

  John Thomas Flynn (1944). “As We Go Marching”, p.122, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Retirement, Leisure

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.33, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
  Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed,
  No austere faith based on ignoble fear
  Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
  Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
  Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
  Think not to find a Paradise beyond.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Life, Love Is, Thinking

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.1121, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Life, Country, Character

  Speech to Hamilton Club, Chicago, Ill., 10 Apr. 1899

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• I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labour and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Spring, Winning, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (1904). “The Roosevelt Book: Selections from the Writings of Theodore Roosevelt”

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• It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men's attitude toward women and women's passive acceptance of this attitude.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Attitude, Women, Acceptance

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• Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient.

  Rumi

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.55, Lulu.com

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• Everybody's got a worldview, whether they know they have it or they don't. They might even get it when they are little tiny kids. Suppose they get it when they are in college, which is often the case, or in high school, whatever. Everything they learn after that or every thing they see after that, they fit it into that worldview. And they are making coherence of what's good, what's bad, what will work, what won't work, what's noble, what's ignoble, and so on... all through this filter.

  Jane Jacobs

  School, Kids, College

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

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• In landing operations, retreat is impossible, to surrender is as ignoble as it is foolish. above all else remember that we as attackers have the initiative, we know exactly what we are going to do, while the enemy is ignorant of our intentions and can only parry our blows. We must retain this tremendous advantage by always attacking rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, and without rest.

  George S. Patton

  War, Blow, Ignorant

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• Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

  Jean Cocteau

  Noble, Rewards, Return

  "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1988.

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• Ways of loving from a distance, mating without even touching-Amor platonicus! The ladder of love one is expected to climb higher and higher, elating the Self and the Other. Plato clearly regards any actual physical contact as corrupt and ignoble because he thinks the true goal of Eros is beauty. Is there no beauty in sex? Not according to Plato. He is after `more sublime pursuits.' But if you ask me, I think Plato's problem, like those of many others, was that he never got splendidly laid.

  Elif Safak

  Sex, Plato, Distance

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• Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

  H. L. Mencken

  Encouragement, Birth Rate, Democracy

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• Up and away for life! be fleet!-
  The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
  Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
  Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
  Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
  And hems in life with narrowing fence.
  Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-
  The punctual stars will vigil keep,-
  Embalmed by purifying cold;
  The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
  The snow is no ignoble shroud,
  The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Kings, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.234, Delphi Classics

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